EGGS
The barnyard has always played an important part in the rural peasant kitchen. The hen is the most useful of all, and only the young cockerels would ever disappear into the pot before their time. A dozen good layers can keep a family well supplied with eggs all year, and leave a good handful in times of glut for the housewife to trade for her ‘corner-of-the-apron’ money. Eggs are a useful little cash crop. In Spain, eggs were, until recent times, negotiable currency, and an egg-woman would be able to make a living by travelling from farm to farm collecting the surplus eggs to be sold in the local markets, paying for them with pepper, salt, coffee, needles and thread–anything which were not home grown. Gerald Brennan reported in South from Granada that, in the 1920s, the local ‘lady of easy virtue’ in his village would often accept payment in eggs.
SOFT-BOILED EGGS
Oeufs à la coque and Oeufs mollets (France)
Failing eggs from your own hens, use the best free-range eggs for the most reliable source you can find. If the eggs have been refrigerated, allow them to come up to room temperature before you start. A perfectly soft-cooked egg is a fine-judged thing.
Quantity: Allow 2 eggs per person
Utensils: A large pan
Bring a large pan of water to the boil. When it is boiling, slip in the eggs. Cover the pan and leave the eggs to simmer for 3-3½ minutes, depending on the size of the eggs. This will give you a soft-set white and a runny yolk.
If you leave the eggs in for 1½ minutes longer, this will give you oeufs mollets: plunge them immediately into cold water and then peel them: the whites will be firm and the yolks still soft. Serve with a cheese sauce, creamed vegetables or with a vegetable stew. There are a great many dishes which require oeufs mollet.
To hard-cook eggs perfectly every time, have them at room temperature. Cover the eggs with warm water in a saucepan and bring it to the boil. Remove and cover as soon as the water boils. Leave them for 6 minutes. Take the eggs out and plunge them into cold water. They will peel easily, and are never grey at the edges or tough.
Successful truffle hunters in France sometimes leave a black Périgord truffle in a basket of fresh eggs overnight. The scent of the fresh truffle is pungent enough to perfume the eggs. These are then soft-boiled or scrambled the following day, allowing the frugal folk to eat their truffle and sell it in the market too.
HOLLANDAISE SAUCE
(Huguenot Dutch)
Sauce hollandaise, or Dutch sauce, appears first in the household books of Huguenot refugees who fled to Holland in 1685 to escape religious persecution in the wake of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Many of the refugee families came from the south of France, from the protestant strongholds of the Languedoc and Provence, olive-oil country, where Huguenot housewives were used to preparing egg-and-oil sauces such as aioli and mayonnaise.
Holland, flat land of fertile pastures and dairy herds, had only good sweet butter to offer in place of the oil. The resourceful Huguenots needed to make but minor adaptations to their recipe to produce a sauce hollandaise.
A recipe for Dutch Sauce, An Easy Way, appears in the household book of Charlotte du Cane, who married William Garnham Luard in 1845. The family lived in Essex, within easy access of their relations who had settled in Holland.
‘Put two tablespoons of boiling water with pepper and salt into a small saucepan. Stir into it four ounces of fresh butter melted, and whisk in the yolks of two eggs. Place this first saucepan into a second saucepan which is half filled with cold water. Put it on a moderate fire, stirring the contents of the inner saucepan without cease. When the water in the outer saucepan boils, the sauce will be thickened enough. Finish with lemon juice.’
Serve with a dish of oeufs mollets. Or with fresh spring vegetables or in any other dish which seems appropriate to you. The sauce is as infinitely adaptable as its creators. Contemporary English versions usually begin with a white sauce.
SCRAMBLED EGGS
(Britain)
The earliest cooked eggs were probably simply roasted in the embers of the fire. Perhaps some enterprising Ancient Briton one day solved the problem of a cracked shell by mixing up the contents with a twig and cooking the result.
Quantity: For 4, allowing 2 eggs per person
Time: Preparation and cooking: 10 minutes
8 eggs
50g/2 oz butter
Salt and pepper
2 tablespoons creamy milk
Utensils: A bowl and a small saucepan
Break the eggs into a bowl and beat them to a froth with salt and freshly milled black pepper. Add the milk and beat the mixture some more.
Melt the butter gently in a small pan–the butter should only melt, not take colour. Roll it round the pan. Tip in the egg mixture. Stir constantly with a wooden spoon over a low heat while the eggs thicken. They will form soft curds on the bottom of the pan, and this is what you must scrape in the rest of the liquid. When they are on the point of setting but still runny, take them off the heat. Give a final stir.
Served at once, accompanied by hot toast or fresh bread. At their best in the company of crispfried thin rashes of smoked streaked bacon, or smoked haddock cooked in milk.
OMELETTE
(France)
Unlike the Italian frittata and the Spanish tortilla–essentially round egg-cakes–the French omelette is rolled into a neat little bolster and served baveuse–a wonderfully onomatopoeic adjective to describe the juicy froth which remains enfolded at its tender heart. Make each omelette individually.
Quantity: Serves 1
2 large free-range eggs (3 medium eggs)
Salt and pepper
Walnut-sized nugget of butter
Utensils: A small omelette pan–cheap raw-iron is the best. To temper, heat a tablespoonful of oil in the new pan until it’s smoking. Drop in a handful of salt and heat the pan again. When it is smoking some more, take a pad of newspaper and polish the surface well with the hot salt. Wipe out the salt and polish the pan with a fresh pad of paper. It will now have a non stick surface and should not be washed but wiped out and rubbed with oil before storing.
Put the plates to warm before you begin. They should not be too hot or the omelette will start to cook again.
Whisk the eggs together vigorously with a pinch of salt and a few turns of the pepper mill. When they are well mixed and frothy, put a small nugget of butter in the omelette pan to melt. Move it around the pan as it does so. When it is good and hot and foamy but has not yet changed colour, pour in the eggs. Hold the handle with one hand and the fork with the other. Move the eggs as they cook, pulling them away from the base of the pan in soft creamy curds, much as if you were scrambling them.
When the curds are forming but still frothy stop moving it so that a skin can form on the base. Drop an extra piece of cold butter on the froth. Fold one third of the omelette over the middle third. Tip the omelette onto the waiting warm plate, folding it over the open third as you do so, to give a plump oblong bolster, set and slightly browned on the outside, and runny–baveuse–within. The cooking should take no more than 3 minutes.
Suggestions:
• Omelette fines herbes: Mix some chopped fresh herbs in to the eggs before you start the cooking.
• Omelette au jambon: sprinkle with chopped ham before you roll it over.
• Omelette au fromage: fork a tablespoonful of grated cheese into the raw egg before you cook it.
• Omelette à la crème: Fold with a tablespoonful of something delicious in a cream: sweetbreads, morel mushrooms, brains, diced cooked chicken.
• Omelette aux champignons: Stir in a handful of mushrooms–wild or cultivated–which you first sautéed in butter. The fillings in a French omelette are always cooked before they are folded in.
• Omelette provençale: Drop a spoonful of fresh tomato sauce into the soft heart just before you roll it.
CHEESE FRITTATA
Frittata con pecorino (Italy)
The Italian omelette is an egg fritter which takes the shape of the pan in which it’s cooked. Any additions, including cheese, are always fried in the pan first, and then the egg is poured round it into the hot oil. Nevertheless, a plain cheese frittata is hard to better.
Quantity: Serves 2
Time: Preparation and cooking: 20 minutes
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 slices fresh pecorino cheese
4 large free-range eggs (6, if small)
Salt and pepper
Utensils: A bowl, a small frying pan
Heat the olive oil in the pan. Lay the slices of cheese in the oil when it is smoking lightly. Flip them over as soon as they melt.
Meanwhile, fork the eggs with the salt and pepper. When the cheese is melted and beginning to crisp at the edges, pour the eggs round the slices. Turn up the heat and cook till set on top. Either serve it like this, or slide the frittata out onto a plate and reverse it back into the hot pan and cook the other side for a moment or two. Serve immediately, with fresh bread and cold white wine. Accompany with a green salad, dressed with olive oil and a squeeze of lemon.
Suggestions:
• A mature cheese which melts well–cantal, gruyère, fontina–can be used instead of pecorino.
• To make an artichoke frittata: trim the hard tops of small artichoke and sliver finely. Cook them quickly in the hot oil, and then pour in the eggs.
• Make a frittata with slices of salami or black pudding or diced prosciutto: just fry until crisp in the oil before you add the eggs.
• Other possibilities are wild or cultivated fungi–porcini, cardoncelli (oyster mushrooms), summer truffle, asparagus, ham, peas, beans, courgette flowers, sliced onion, spinach, peppers, fish fry (bianchetti), prawns, shrimp, and shucked clams.
PEASANT OMELETTE
Bauernomelet (Germany)
A sturdy plateful for a working man home from the fields. A fine breakfast and a satisfying supper.
Quantity: Serves 4
Time: Preparation: 20 minutes
Cooking: 20-30 minutes
1kg/2 lb old potatoes
500g/1 lb onions
100g/4 oz speck (or pancetta or streaky bacon)
6 eggs
Salt and pepper
A handful of chives
Utensils: A saucepan, a frying pan
Boil the potatoes in their skins in plenty of boiling salted water. This will take 20-30 minutes depending on size. Peel them as soon as they are cool enough to handle and slice thickly. Slice the onions and dice the speck.
Heat the frying pan. Fry the speck gently in its own fat (you may need a little extra lard). Add the onions and fry until golden. Push aside (or remove and reserve) and fry the potato slices until they take a little colour.
Meanwhile fork the eggs together to blend. When the potatoes are lightly browned and beginning to crisp, stir in the onions and speck. Pour in the egg, fold it into the vegetables, and cook until set. Sprinkle with chopped chives and serve in the pan in which it was cooked. Eat it straight from the pan, with pumpernickel or good German rye and a glass of milk to wash it down.
SPANISH POTATO OMELETTE
Tortilla española (Spain)
Spain’s egg-and-chips, the national fast food, a thick, juicy egg-and-potato cake which can be eaten at any time, anywhere–cooked to order and straight from the pan or allowed to cool to room temperature (never chilled). It can be eaten as an appetiser, or as the main event. Schoolchildren take it to school for the midday break; toothless old grannies live on it; cut into neat little squares speared with a toothpick, it appears as a tapa in every bar from Cadiz to Bilbao.
Quantity: Serves 4 (8-10 as a tapa)
Time: Preparation and cooking: 30 minutes
1kg/2 lb potatoes (1 medium potato per egg)
1 large Spanish onion (or 2 smaller ones)
Olive oil for frying
6 eggs
Salt
Utensils: A 20cm/8 inch frying pan (in Spain, a thin, raw-iron pan is kept well-oiled for this job (to temper), and a bowl, draining spoon, and spatula
Peel and cut the potatoes into slices or chips or dice–everyone has their own preferences. Skin and finely chop or sliver the onion.
Put just enough oil to heat in the pan to cover the potatoes. When a faint blue haze rises, slip in the potatoes and fry gently. They should soften, but not take colour–about 15 minutes in all. After 10 minutes add the onion and sprinkle with a little salt. Once the potatoes are perfectly tender, transfer to a sieve set over a bowl to catch the drippings.
Fork the eggs lightly with salt and pepper and stir in the potatoes as soon as they cool a little. Save the frying-oil in the pan (it can be reused for frying) and add the drippings from the bowl back to the pan–you’ll only need a tablespoon or two to fry the tortilla–heat the pan again and tip in the egg mixture. Lift the edge to allow the egg to run underneath. Continue to fry gently until the eggs begin to look set. The heat should be low or the base will burn before the eggs are ready. As the tortilla cooks, neaten the sides with a metal spatula to build up a deep straight edge to the tortilla. When firm at the sides but still juicy in the middle, invert it onto a plate, then slip it back into the pan to cook the other side–you may need a little more oil.
Serve at room temperature, quartered or cut into neat little squares for tapas. As a midday meal or light supper, accompany it with a rough country salad of chopped cos lettuce, chunks of tomato and cucumber, green olives and slices of mild onion casually dressed with olive oil, a sprinkle of wine vinegar, and salt.
Suggestions:
• Additional flavourings might be: diced Serrano ham, chorizo, a handful of cooked green beans and a little marjoram, peas, diced green or red peppers, thin green asparagus cut into short lengths. As with the potatoes, anything which is not good to eat when raw should be pre-cooked in water or in the oil with the potatoes before they meet the oil.
FRIED EGGS
Huevos fritos (Spain)
The trick is the freshest of free-range eggs and good quality olive oil–non-virgin is better than virgin for the frying because a lack of debris, the stuff which gives virgin oil much of its flavour, can be subjected to a higher heat without burning. The better the ingredients, the better the dish.
Quantity: Allow 2 large eggs per person
Time: Allow 10 minutes from start to finish
2 free-range eggs per person
Olive oil for frying
Rough salt
Utensils: A frying pan and a draining spoon
Crack the egg into a cup first–unless you’re confident of your egg-cracking skills.
Heat a finger’s depth of oil in the frying pan until a faint blue smoke rises. Tip the pan to one side on the heat, so that you have a deep pool of oil. Slide the egg into the hot oil and return it swiftly to a high heat, spooning hot oil over the top and tucking the edges over to make a little round cake. The edges should crisp into a light golden frill, the white set just firm, and the yolk remains runny. Sprinkle with rough salt and serve immediately.
Suggestions:
• Exquisite slipped onto a bed of crisp gold chips fried in olive oil. Or with migas.
• Accompany with a dish of Spanish tomatoes–large and meaty–halved and gently fried face down with a little garlic, and a plate of fried green peppers. The green peppers sold in Spain for the purpose are a long green variety with thin flesh–no need to hull or de-seed; they cook quickly and are best when slightly charred.
• Good with a plain risotto rice (cooked in the Spanish manner when the rice grains are first lightly fried in oil before liquid is added), and a sauce made of fresh tomatoes stewed with a little oil and garlic and then puréed. A little sugar helps imported tomatoes which have been picked before their time.
• The Italians use a deep-fryer, turning the eggs over half way through to produce a neat crisp patty.
EGGS WITH HAM
Huevos al plato con jamón (Spain)
A dish for a late breakfast or light supper or first course for the heavy midday meal, which is usually taken around 2 pm and is traditionally followed by a siesta. Spaniards lunch prodigiously if they have the opportunity, but eat relatively lightly at night–eggs, a ladleful of puchero broth finished with a little diced hard-boiled egg, serrano ham and parsley.
Quantity: Serves 4
Time: 10 minutes
8 eggs
Olive oil
4 slices serrano ham or lean bacon
Black pepper
Utensils: 4 small earthenware fireproof dishes
Pour a tablespoon of olive oil into each individual dish and put them straight onto direct heat. When the oil is smoking hot, lay in a slice of ham in each dish and top each slice with 2 eggs (crack them into a cup first). Fry for 3-4 minutes to set the white. Give each dish a turn of the pepper mill and then serve. The eggs will continue to cook in their dish.
Serve with fresh bread and a chopped tomato salad if you are serving it as a light supper.
Suggestions:
• A few slices of chorizo, morcilla (black pudding), shredded pre-soaked bacalao (salt cod), tuna, peeled prawns, and a handful of fried red peppers can replace the ham. A tablespoon of peas, green beans, chopped green asparagus, a spoonful of tomato sauce add sparkle. Any additions should go in before the eggs.
CHARD OMELETTE
La Trouchia (France)
Food for the picnic pocket, at its best at the temperature of a summer’s day in and around Nice, where the Italian influence is strong. A passion for the dark green leaves and ivory white stalks of Swiss chard–blea in the patois–has earned the niçoise the nickname caga-blea; I’m sure you can work out the meaning for yourself. A trouchia is made with the green tops only; the stalks are too juicy and will make the omelette grey and damp, particularly as it cools. The stalks can be cooked like asparagus and eaten with an oil and vinegar dressing, or with aioli as a dipping sauce.
Quantity: Makes a light lunch for 4
Time: 30-40 minutes
500g/1 lb Swiss chard leaves
6 large free-range eggs
100g/4 oz strong hard cheese (cantal, pecorino, parmesan)
Salt and pepper
4 tablespoons olive oil
Handful chervil (or marjoram, basil or Italian parsley)
Utensils: A mixing bowl and a frying pan
Rinse the chard leaves, shake or pat dry and slice into fine ribbons. Grate the cheese and beat it into the eggs in a bowl. Season with salt and pepper. Chop the herbs–you will need plenty, 3-4 heaped tablespoons is about right–and then mix them in with the eggs.
Put 3 tablespoons of the oil to warm in a roomy frying pan. Add the chard ribbons and toss them in the oil till they wilt (don’t let it brown or it will taste bitter). Remove the pan from the heat, allow to cool a little, tip the contents into the eggs and stir all together.
Heat the last tablespoon of oil in the frying pan. As soon as it’s good and hot, pour in the egg-chard mixture. Cover loosely and cook over a gentle heat until the eggs are set–15-20 minutes should do the trick. The method is then the same as for the Spanish tortilla: turn the now-firm pancake out, reversing it as you do so that the cooked side is uppermost, onto a plate. Slide it gently back into the hot pan (add a trickle more oil if necessary) and finish cooking it, uncovered now, on the other side. Ready in about another 15 minutes. Notice that the cooking is very gentle–this is the southern way with eggs, and has little in common with the fast butter-cooked French omelette which is soft inside and rolled onto itself before serving.
Perfect for a beach picnic, slipped inside a length of crisp baguette, with a few ripe tomatoes or maybe with something good in the way of charcuterie.
Suggestions:
• If you don’t want to risk the frying pan, bake in the oven as for a tian.
EGGS AND VEGETABLES
Piperade (Basque)
The Basque nation is like no other. Their language owes nothing at all to their Latin neighbours and has no readily-identifiable relatives. Although linguistic research came up with a possible link with the Finnish and Hungarian languages–also orphans in the genealogical storm–this has since been discounted. Nevertheless the Basques share at least one culinary passion with the Hungarians, one of rather more recent date than the development of language: the cooks of both nations took enthusiastically to a New World import, the chilli pepper. The Hungarians tamed its fieriness to produce the mild sweet or bell pepper–the raw material for paprika as well as Spain’s pimentón–with which the delectable piperade is coloured and flavoured.
Quantities: Serves 4 as a light meal
Time: 30 minutes
8 free-range eggs
Salt and pepper
1 mild Spanish onion
2 garlic cloves
2 red and 1 green pepper
500g/1lb ripe tomatoes
2 tablespoons fresh pork lard, goose fat or olive oil
To serve
4 thick slices pan candeal or any dense-crumbed country bread
Utensils: A bowl and a shallow earthenware casserole which will withstand direct heat or a frying pan
Fork the eggs lightly together with a little salt and pepper. Peel and chop the onion and the garlic. De-seed the peppers and slice into short strips. Peel the tomatoes–the skin will slip off easily enough if you pour boiling water over them first–de-seed and dice. If they’ve been grown under glass instead of under the Mediterranean sun, sprinkle on a little sugar.
Heat the lard, goose fat or oil in the casserole or frying pan. Add the chopped onions and garlic and fry gently until they turn golden. Push them to one side and add the peppers. Fry till they soften and gild a little, and then add the tomatoes. Simmer together gently till all is reduced to a thick sauce–about 10 minutes. Don’t mash: the peppers must remain visibly chunky.
Meanwhile, toast the bread and rub with a cut garlic clove and trickle with a little dripping or oil–or crisp in very little oil on a hot griddle. Put four plates to warm in the oven.
Now that the tomato and pepper mixture is thick and rich and its water has evaporated, tell your diners to take their places. Stir in the eggs over the heat, turning the mixture as it thickens. As soon as it is creamy, take it off the heat. You want to avoid a watery grainy mess and aim for a soft smooth scramble–and there is only a minute or two of difference between the two. Spoon the piperade onto the warm plates, accompanied by the bread you have already prepared. To accompany, a light, young red wine from the slopes of the Pyrenees.
Suggestions:
• For a touch of luxury, top each serving with a slice of serrano ham or jambon de bayonne. Or add diced raw ham or bacon to the sauce–slip it in when the onions are nicely gilded. Every Basque farmhouse fattened up its own household pig to fill the winter larder–salted down and smoked for extra longevity in a damp climate. The porker is a versatile and much-travelled beast.
EGGS WITH YOGHURT
(Bulgaria)
Somewhere between scrambled eggs and a savoury custard–creamy and sharp-flavoured. The Bulgarians claim to have invented the process which transforms fresh milk into yoghurt–and to prove it, the enzyme which transforms rather than sours bears their name.
Quantity: Serves 2
Time: Preparation and cooking: about 40 minutes
300ml/1½ pints creamy yoghurt (sheep’s milk gives best results)
4 free-range eggs
4 tablespoons curd cheese
2 heaped tablespoons fresh breadcrumbs
Salt and pepper
Butter for cooking
Utensils: A whisk and bowl or a blender, a shallow earthenware casserole or baking dish
Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C/Gas 4.
Whisk the yoghurt, eggs and curd cheese together in a bowl until creamy–easily done in the blender. Mix in the breadcrumbs and season with salt and pepper. Pour into a lightly buttered casserole or baking dish. Put it to cook in the oven for 30-35 minutes until firm and gilded. Serve with thick slices of black or rye bread and a Bulgarian chopped salad.
Suggestions:
• For a more sophisticated dish, line the pie dish first with 6 layers of buttered filo pastry.
SWEET EGG DISHES
EGG NOG
Zabaglione (Italy)
In its simplest form–a raw egg whisked into its own volume of vin santo, sweet wine–it’s the rural Italian housewife’s all-purpose restorative: spoon food for the elderly, a cold-cure for children with sniffles, a pick-me-up for overindulgent adults the morning after. Of such modest beginnings are great reputations made.
Quantity: Enough for 4 glasses
Time: Preparation and cooking: 20 minutes
6 fresh free-range eggs of impeccable provenance
6 tablespoons caster sugar
6 eggshells of vin santo or any dessert wine
Utensils: A saucepan and a bowl to fit over it, a whisk
Put a pan of water on to boil. In a bowl, whisk the eggs–yolk and whites–with the sugar until white and fluffy. This will take twice as long as you think. Whisk in the wine.
Rest the bowl over the boiling water. Beat until the mixture is firm and holds the mark of the whisk. Serve in tall glasses, with long spoons.
Suggestions:
• If the zabaglione is to be eaten immediately, you need not cook it.
• It freezes (cooked) to make a delicious ice cream.
HEAVENLY BACON
Toucinho do céu (Portugal)
Egg-custard heaven–though the name is more accurately translated as ‘heavenly bacon’. A Moorish speciality, one of many introduced to European sensibilities by Arab cooks. Sugar cane was planted both in Andalusia and in the Algarve to supply the Arab taste for sweets and syrups–and this seductive ladies’ treat is to be found in Spain as well as Portugal. Its origins are obscure. By the time Ferdinand and Isabella finally took Granada and the Moorish occupation was over, the imported taste was centuries old–and such habits die hard. The Spanish and Portuguese convents continued with the tradition of sweet making, transferring the pleasure to religious rather than secular celebrations. Confections made with egg yolks (the whites had other uses–mostly for the baking of communion wafers and in the refining process for sherry wines) were served and sold to mark festivals of the Virgin and other female saints. The nun-confectioners gave their products deliciously erotic names–‘nun’s bellies,’ ‘virgin’s dew’, ‘angel hair’. Recipes for Portuguese egg-yolk-and-sugar sweetmeats soon began to appear in the cookbooks of Europe, including those of England–whose links with Portugal in particular were strong. Sir Kenelm Digby’s Closet Open’d of 1669 has several recipes for egg-yolk and sugar custards. Meanwhile Portugal was rapidly becoming a successful colonialist, and had acquired a clutch of new and sun-drenched territories where her sugar cane could be planted. Limitless supplies of the until-then expensive ingredient further encouraged the confectioners. Rum, spin-off from the sugar-cane industry, was added to her cellar (and her rural breakfast table as well).
Quantity: Enough for 8-10 portions (it is very rich)
Time: Preparation: 30-40 minutes
Cooking: 30 minutes
Caramel made with 2 heaped tablespoons sugar, 2 teaspoons water, and juice of half a lemon
350g/12 oz granulated sugar
300ml/½ pint cold water
1 twist of lemon peel
12 large egg yolks (another 2 if the eggs are small)
Utensils: 20cm/8 inch square baking tin and somewhat larger roasting tin to act as a bainmarie, a heavy saucepan and some foil
Make the caramel in the baking pan you will use for the toucinho: melt the sugar, water and lemon juice together in the pan, turning it over a high flame until the sugar caramelizes into a rich golden brown. This will take only a moment or two. Tip to coat the base. Set aside to cool.
Put the sugar with the lemon peel and the water in a heavy pan, and heat over a medium flame until the sugar is dissolved. Boil for about 20 minutes. Stir with a wooden spoon: if the syrup trails a transparent string when you lift the spoon out, it is cooked enough. Remove the lemon peel.
Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C/Gas 4.
Meanwhile whisk the egg yolks thoroughly. Pour the hot syrup into the eggs, whisking as you do so. This will begin the thickening process. Pour the mixture into the caramel-lined baking tin. Cover with foil, shiny side down. Set the tin in the roasting pan and pour boiling water all around. Bake for 30-40 minutes, until perfectly firm and solid to the finger.
Allow to cool. Cut into squares: sticky, rich, and golden as the sun of heaven. You will need to take a glass of water, Moorish style, to cut the sweetness.
Suggestions:
• Regional recipes abound. You may, if you wish, include a few tablespoons of freshly pounded blanched almonds, a dusting of powdered cinnamon, vanilla from the pod.
CUSTARD PUDDING
Flan (Belgium)
Egg-and-milk puddings are to be found in all dairy-farming households, including those of the rich Belgian countryside. The dish also appears under the same name in Spain, where dairy products are by no means widely available: it seems likely that the recipe travelled south during the 16th century, when Spain and the Netherlands were united under the Hapsburg Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. In modern Spain, however, it is simply a baked caramel custard similar, though not as sweet and rich, to Heavenly Bacon.
Quantity: Serves 4
Time: Preparation: 15 minutes
Cooking: 20-25 minutes
5 eggs
150g/5 oz flour
1 litre/2 pints creamy milk or single cream
100g/4 oz sugar
Utensils: A bowl, a whisk, an oval pudding dish, and a saucepan
Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C/Gas 4.
Whisk the eggs together with a tablespoon of the milk or cream. Put the flour into the pudding dish, and beat it to a thick paste with the egg mixture.
Bring the rest of the milk and sugar to the boil in a separate saucepan. Pour the hot sweetened milk over and around the egg-flour paste.
Bake for 20-25 minutes.
Suggestions:
• For a special occasion, flavour with vanilla or cinnamon and serve with stewed fruit or summer berries.
EGG AND BUTTERMILK PORRIDGE
Kaernemaelkssuppe (Denmark)
A great meal for a single person on a chilly evening. In Denmark, it’s served as a starter–eaten before the meat.
Quantity: Serves 4
Time: Preparation and cooking: 20-25 minutes
50g/2 oz ground rice
1 litre/2 pints buttermilk
2 large free-range eggs
2 tablespoons sugar
Utensils: 2 small bowls, a heavy saucepan, a wooden spoon, and a whisk
Mix the ground rice to a paste with 2 tablespoons milk. Put the rest of the milk in the saucepan, whisk in the paste, and then stir over a gentle heat until it thickens and the ground rice loses its raw taste. Keep stirring–milk burns rather easily.
When the soup is ready, mix the eggs with the sugar in a separate bowl. Slowly pour on the hot liquid, whisking steadily.
Suggestions:
• Include a fistful of pre-soaked raisins or chopped prunes or dried apricots along with a small stick of cinnamon or a piece of lemon peel for flavouring.
• On a cold winter’s evening stir in a small glass of strong liqueur–schnapps–along with the eggs and sprinkle with flaked toasted almonds.
• On a hot summer’s day, serve it ice-cold, with slices of lemon and a plate of sweet biscuits.
MILK AND DAIRY PRODUCE
SOURED MILK
Surmelk (Scandinavia and Germany)
Specially-soured milk has always been much appreciated as a refreshment by the inhabitants of the dairy-producing regions of northern Europe. Being more digestible than raw milk, it’s considered healthy as well as sustaining. Allowed to set lightly, it can be eaten with a spoon from a bowl, maybe topped with fresh or conserved berries, or sprinkled with crumbled flatbread or rusk and finished with sugar and cinnamon; or as a fortifying snack, quite simply, with black bread and pickles.
Quantity: Serves 2
Time: Start a few hours ahead
600m/1 pint fresh raw milk
2 tablespoons yesterday’s soured milk or buttermilk or 1 teaspoon vinegar
Mix the two ingredients together and set in a warm (not hot) place for a few hours. It will be best if it sets rapidly. Serve cool.
YOGHURT
Kisselo mleka (Bulgaria)
Yoghurt is eaten with meals or as a snack and praised as the ‘milk of eternal life’. Bulgarian yoghurt is the original and only begetter of Lactobacillus bulgaricus, the little organism now used worldwide, in company with Streptococcus thermophilus, to turn milk into the delicious healthy curds which appear on so many modern breakfast tables. Yoghurt is very easy to make, and needs no complicated apparatus. You will need a tablespoon of ‘starter’ yoghurt per 600ml/1 pint of milk: any plain unsweetened yoghurt will do, but Bulgarian is best. There are those devotees who insist on bringing their very own ‘starter’ from its home territory. Once you have made the first batch, a spoonful of the homemade yoghurt can be used in the next batch. The Bulgars have lost none of their ancient enthusiasm for their national delicacy: refillable glass jars of yoghurt are on sale in the State distribution centres all over modern Bulgaria.
Sheep’s milk makes the best yoghurt, but whatever you do, native Bulgarian bacillus notwithstanding, there will still be a few unidentified and elusive organisms native to the implements which have been in use for generations–wooden troughs, pails, and spoons that produce the perfect sweet-sour thick curd only on home territory–although that’s not to say you cannot brew up a few benevolent organisms of your very own. The very best Bulgarian yoghurt is to be bought at the top of the Shipka pass where the Russians fought with the Turks to throw off the Ottoman yoke. This is the pass which stands at the head of the Valley of the Roses, where the petals are harvested in late June and early July to provide most of the world’s attar of roses.
Quantity: Serves 4-6
Time: Start the day before
Preparation: 15 minutes
1 litre/2 pints full-cream milk (sheep or goat’s sets more firmly than cow’s milk, ‘long-life’ homogenised milk makes a thick rich yoghurt)
1 tablespoon fresh yoghurt (the starter’)
Utensils: A saucepan and a thermos, or a large glass bowl, a perforated spoon plus 1 rug or small blanket to keep the culture coddled
Bring the milk to the boil in a heavy saucepan. If you do not boil the milk first, it will not make a smooth yoghurt. Turn down the heat as soon as the milk froths up, and simmer it for a minute or two. Remove from the heat. Leave it to cool down to 110°F. The traditional indicator of this temperature is when you can manage to hold your index finger in the liquid while you count to ten. Skim the milk off any skin which has formed. Beat the spoonful of yoghurt ‘starter’ with a little of the warm milk in the bottom of the large bowl, and beat in the rest of the milk.
Pour the mixture into the thermos and seal it. Or cover the bowl with a plate or lid, and then wrap it up tenderly in the blanket and put it in a warm place overnight to set. It will keep well in the refrigerator for a week, but if you want to use a spoonful to start a new batch, do not leave it longer than three or four days or the new yoghurt will not turn into a thick enough curd.
Suggestions:
• Yoghurt can be used to enrich and thicken sauces instead of cream. However, bear in mind that the original yoghurt was made with sheep’s milk, a robust product which, if well-salted, does not curdle easily when boiled; but cow’s milk yoghurt does curdle, so must be stabilized first if it is to be added to a hot sauce. To stabilise 1½ pints cows’ milk yoghurt, beat in a tablespoonful of flour mixed to a cream with 2 tablespoons of water; or whisk an egg into the yoghurt before you heat it–don’t allow it to boil.
• To make a thick yoghurt, such as the Greek strained yoghurt used to make tzatsiki, make a batch of yoghurt and leave to drip for a few hours through a jelly cloth.
YOGHURT CHEESE
Labna (Eastern Europe)
A fresh cheese made by draining fresh yoghurt till the whey is all pressed out–a longer process than for strained yoghurt. Labna–a product somewhere between cream cheese and curd cheese but with the additional refinement of the ‘starter’ bacillus–is very popular throughout the Middle East as well as Greece and the Balkans.
To prepare, you’ll need a batch of goat’s or sheep’s milk yoghurt–cow’s milk is too soft. Stir in a little salt–a scant teaspoonful per 600ml/1 pint of yoghurt–and transfer to a clean linen or cotton cloth; tied over an up-ended stool as if it was a jelly cloth, or knot the corners to enclose, and hang it up on a hook to drain (place a bowl beneath to catch the drippings). Leave overnight. The following morning you will have a snow-white curd cheese. Roll it into little balls and sprinkle with fresh herbs or olive oil and paprika. To store for more than a few days, dry the little balls on a clean cloth in a cool larder for 2 days, and then pack them into a large glass jar. Cover with olive oil. They will keep for months if stored in the refrigerator, and are excellent with fresh bread or used as a stuffing for boreki.
BREAD CHEESE
Uunijuustoa (Finland)
A very unusual preparation: a wheel of creamy yellow curds with a consistency rather like dry cottage cheese–squeaky when you bite into it. Particularly good with summer berries, although the Finns treat it as a staple storehouse food.
Quantity: Makes about 250g/8 oz
Time: Preparation and cooking: 1-2 hours
3 litres/5 pints fresh milk
1 teaspoon rennet (from the health-food store)
1 teaspoon salt
Utensils: A roomy saucepan, a large frying pan or heavy baking tray
In a roomy pan, bring the milk to blood heat. Remove from the heat, stir in the rennet and leave to set as junket–this will take about an hour in a warm place. Set the pan back on the stove and heat the junket gently until the curd separates and you can lift the clots of curd out with your hands. As you do so, squeeze out the rennet.
Pat the curd into a baking pan or a wide frying pan to give a cartwheel of cheese about half an inch thick. Cook either on top of the stove or in the oven at 350°F/180°C/Gas 4 for 1-2 hours, until the outside is golden brown. Eat with coffee or milk, or fry slices in butter and sprinkle them with sugar. The Finns treat it as if it were bread.
Leftovers:
• Use the whey to make bread and scones.
SOURED MILK
Piimä (Finland)
Ethel Tweedie, author of Through Finland in Carts, sought hospitality the 1890s in the home of a wealthy Finnish peasant whose tenant farmers paid their rent in labour:
‘What a scene met our eyes! An enormous kitchen, a wooden-floored, ceilinged and walled room about thirty feet square, boasting five windows–large and airy, I was about to say, but it just missed being airy because no fresh breeze was ever allowed to enter except by the door. At one end was the usual enormous fireplace, with its large chimney and small cooking stove, into which wood had continually to be piled, coal being as unknown to the inland Finn as the sea-serpent itself. At the other end of the room, opposite the fireplace, was a large wooden table with benches arranged along two sides, at which the labourers were feeding, for the one o’clock bell hanging above the roof had just been rung by the farmer and they had all come in for their midday meal. It was really a wonderful scene; five men wearing coloured shirts, and four women, with white handkerchiefs over their heads, were sitting round the table, and between each couple was a small wooden, long handled pail from which the pair, each duly provided with a wooden spoon, were helping themselves. Finnish peasants … all feed from one pot and drink from one bowl in truly Eastern fashion. The small wooden receptacle, which really served as a basin, contained pimmea or skimmed milk that had gone sour, a composition somewhat allied to skyr, on which peasants live in Iceland, only that skyr is sheep’s milk often months old, and pimmea is cow’s milk fairly fresh.’
ICELANDIC CURD CHEESE
Skyr (Iceland)
A soft white cheese which, in former days, was made from ewe’s milk, though cow’s milk is more usual today. Either eaten on its own, or with porridge and milk, or–as a luxury and most delicious of all–with sugar and cream and perhaps a spoonful of bilberries. In the days of self-sufficiency, skyr, a storable product in a cold climate, was a major contributor to a diet which would otherwise have been somewhat lacking in protein. The soft curds, bland and sweet when made with care, were stored in big wooden barrels sealed with sheep-fat tallow–sailor’s provisions brought by the first settlers who landed in Iceland around 850 AD. The rennet to turn the milk was made by taking the stomach of the year’s last-born lamb or calf, slaughtered before it took grass; the little bagful of strong curd and powerful enzymes was then hung in a corner to dry. The next season, the stomach would be soaked in salted water and the liquid would be used to turn the New Year’s skyr. The method is common to most cheese-preparing communities, particularly in poor areas, where a small cash-crop is needed for items which cannot be homegrown. In the late 1980s, among the self-sufficient farming communities of Andalusia, the method was used to make storable goat’s cheese, although the renneting agent is a product of the slaughter of the first rather than the last kid of the year; May cheese is made with milk turned with tiny pieces of the actual curd, although later in the summer, as the renneting material dehydrates, an infusion is prepared.
In Iceland, chemically made rennet began to replace the old technique during the course of the 19th century; these days, skyr is prepared in commercial dairies using modern methods and retains its importance in the Icelandic diet.
Quantity: Serves 2
Time: Start a day ahead
3 litres/5 pints fresh skimmed milk
½ teaspoon rennet
1 tablespoon previous batch of skyr or soured raw milk
To serve (optional)
Fresh cream
Fresh or conserved blueberries
Sugar
Utensils: A large saucepan and a wooden bowl or a large thermos, a blanket or rug, a cloth for straining
Commercially prepared skimmed milk will not need boiling to kill the bacteria–the homemade variety will. Bring the skimmed milk to the boil and then pour it into big deep bowls–wooden ones are best. Allow the milk to cool down to 68°F (20°C)–that is, until it feels bearable to the tip of your finger.
Whip up the spoonful of sour milk or skyr until smooth and unctuous. Stir it into the milk very thoroughly. Leave for half an hour. Then stir in the rennet slowly and with care. Cover the bowl with a blanket, or pour all into a thermos. Put aside in a warm place.
Be warned: Icelanders say it takes a few small experimental batches before the skyr will be not too sour but yet well set. When this has been achieved, a spoonful of the perfect batch is used to turn the skyr all summer long. The bacteria will then re-produce themselves impeccably every time. Wonderful enzymes to help the digestive system, say the Icelanders.
The milk should have curdled within 2 hours. Pour the curds through a linen cloth, as if straining jelly, to allow the whey to drain out. Save the whey–the Icelanders would have put their straining cloth over a wooden barrel in order to catch it–to make filbunke. Chill for another couple of hours before serving. Kept in a cool place it will stay fresh for a week–after that it begins to go sour. Serve with cream and fresh berries–blueberries for preference–with or without sugar, a luxury only in general use in Iceland since the end of the nineteenth century.
Suggestions:
• As a working man’s breakfast, serve with a bowl of oatmeal porridge, milk, a slice of blood sausage or liver and a small dish of fresh berries or fruit. As a pick-me-up, beat a spoonful of skyr with a raw egg and a spoonful of honey.
• As a mid-morning snack, mash with chopped onion, chopped herbs, paprika and salt, and eat with rye crispbreads washed down with a glass of fresh milk.
Leftovers:
• The making of skyr produces large quantities of whey which, in the old days–when all dwellings were made of wood–was stored in barrels which, along with a broom-handle for beating out flames, were kept handy by the door in case of fire. As a foodstuff, it has enough nourishment to provide a fisherman with all the energy needed for a full day’s work. In the Icelandic sagas, a chieftain who hid in a barrelful of whey to escape his enemies was not only provided with nourishment and shelter but escaped incineration when the building was burnt down around him. Barrelled up, being rich in proteins, salt and vitamins, it served as food and drink for fishermen on long sea voyages. And if the catch was poor, it had a value as a trade item–the best, much as whisky, being matured in oak and no less than 2 years in the barrel. Skyr also served as a preservative-pickle for meat, blood sausage, liver sausage and the other products of the autumn slaughter.
• A miracle foodstuff capable of restoring invalids to health, easily digestible by babies as well as the elderly, the vast amounts produced by modern industrial cheese factories have obliged local authorities to redefine it as toxic waste, since, when released into a river, it acts as a highly efficient fertiliser for algae whose growth then depletes the supply of oxygen in the water, killing all the fish. Meanwhile, the Icelanders are marketing a fruit-flavoured whey drink which they hope will take the place of commercial fizzy drinks–if it catches on, it will certainly be a great deal healthier.
CURDLED CREAM
Filbunke (Finland)
As she journeyed through Finland in the 1890s, Mrs. Ethel Tweedie worked up a fine appetite for the evening meal:
‘The housewife had two huge soup tureens before her, soup or filbunke, a very favourite summer dish. This is made from fresh milk which has stood in a tureen until it turns sour and forms a sort of curds, when it is eaten with sugar and powdered ginger. It appears at every meal in the summer, and is excellent on a hot day. It must be made of fresh milk left 24 hours in a warm kitchen for the cream to rise, and 24 hours in the cellar to cool afterwards.’
Quantity: Serves 4
Time: Start a day ahead
600ml/1 pint single cream
1 teaspoon soured buttermilk (or vinegar or lemon juice)
Stir the cream with the teaspoon of soured buttermilk. Set in a cool place–a larder rather than the fridge–to develop for 24 hours. If using vinegar or lemon juice, stir it into the cream and allow to stand for only an hour or two. For a delicately ripened cream cheese, allow to drip overnight through a clean cloth in a sieve; next day, wrap in a clean cloth and leave under a weight for 24 hours. Delicious with honey and fresh berries; in spring, good with a rhubarb compote.
Suggestions:
• To make curd cheese -Topfen in Austria, Quark in Germany–stir full-cream milk with soured buttermilk (1 tablespoon sour to 600ml/1 pint fresh). Bring the milk mixed with the starter to just beneath boiling point (200°F/90°C), remove and keep in a warm place for 4-5 hours. Pour the mixture into a sieve lined with a clean cloth set over a bowl; after the first whey has dripped through, top with a scrubbed and scalded plate and leave overnight. Keeps for about a week–good in cheesecakes and in dumpling stuffings.
BUTTERMILK CHEESE
Hangop (Holland)
Soft white curd cheese, a Dutch breakfast dish traditionally made by hanging a pillowcase filled with buttermilk on a convenient branch overnight for the buttermilk to rid itself of its whey. Traditionally made with the first spring milkings and eaten with Dutch rusks–a bread dough enriched with egg, baked in a long thin loaf, sliced and baked again till crisp.
Quantity: Enough for 4 servings
Time: Start in the morning to be ready for the evening
2 litres/3½ pints buttermilk
To serve
4-8 Dutch rusks, depending on appetites
Brown sugar to taste
Fresh strawberries in season
Utensils: A fresh clean linen towel, a large colander and 2 bowls
Set the colander over the bowl and pour in the buttermilk. Leave for 4-6 hours–overnight is best–so that the whey drips through. Stir it from time to time.
When you have a thick creamy yoghurt-like curd, scrape it into a bowl. Serve with a rusk or two crumbled over each portion. Sprinkle with brown sugar and pass the strawberries separately.
JUNKET AND CURD CHEESE
(Britain and Northern Europe)
No more or less than fresh warm milk turned to curds with rennet, a digestive enzyme present in the fourth or ‘true’ stomach of dairy animals. The effect is very similar to souring, though the flavour is more delicate. Renneted milk products are storable, whereas soured milk products must be eaten fresh.
Quantity: Serves 6
Time: Start 4-5 hours ahead
1 litre/2 pints fresh full-cream milk
2 teaspoons rennet (from the health-food store)
2 tablespoons caster sugar
To serve
Freshly grated nutmeg (optional)
Utensils: A large saucepan and 6 pretty serving glasses or bowls
In a roomy pan, warm the milk to blood temperature–test it with your finger, as for a baby’s bottle. Stir in the rennet and the sugar. Pour into glasses or bowls and leave to set–this will take at least 2 hours, though overnight is best. Dust with freshly grated nutmeg. Very light and delicious as a dessert, particularly if served with pouring cream and fresh berries or a fruit compote.
Suggestions:
• To make curd cheese, omit the sugar. When the junket has set, pour the curd into a colander lined with a clean cloth. Leave overnight for the whey to drip through. This quantity will only yield a small amount of cheese.
CLOTTED CREAM
(England)
Buttery, thick and yellow with a characteristic golden crust, clotted cream is made only in Devon and Cornwall, gently heat-processed, made with fat-rich milk from Guernsey or Jersey cows, the Channel Island breeds. Its only rival in richness is kajmak, Turkey’s delicious buffalo cream. The cooking implement–today, a shallow enamel pan–was earthenware, a material which holds its heat comfortably for a long time.
Quantity: Serves 4–makes about 250g/8 oz
Time: Start a day ahead
Preparation: 10 minutes
2 litres/3½ pints unpasteurised full-cream Channel Island milk
Utensils: A very wide, very shallow enamel pan
Pour the milk into the pan–it shouldn’t be more than a finger’s-width deep–and set it over a very low heat and leave overnight–the top of an Aga or the embers of last night’s log fire. The following morning, a thick creamy skin will have formed. Cut this carefully into squares and roll each up into a little carpet roll.
Let the cream rise again–there will be a little more to collect in another few hours. Treat as butter and eat within a week. Wonderful with home-made scones and strawberry jam, or dropped into a baked potato and mashed with chopped spring onion.
COTTAGE CHEESE
Topfen (Austria) Quark (Germany)
An unrenneted curd cheese, refreshingly clean-flavoured.
Quantity: Yields around 250g/8 oz cheese
Time: Start the day before
6 pints/3.5 litres whole milk
4 tablespoons buttermilk or plain yoghurt
Utensils: A heatproof basin, a baking tin to act as a bain marie, a sieve, and a linen cloth
Mix the milk with the yoghurt or buttermilk in the basin. Put it in a warm place for 4 to 5 hours to set as solid as yoghurt. Put the bowl into a pan of water to reach halfway up, and heat to a temperature into which you can just dip your finger–120°F/50°C. At this point the curd separates from the whey. Cut the curd with a knife and heat again briefly, stirring with a wooden spoon. Pour the hot mixture into a sieve lined with a clean linen cloth. Put a plate on top to weight and encourage the whey to drip through. The curds in the cloth are the cheese. Cover and store in a cool larder. It will keep for about a week. Drink the whey for your health.
BUTTER
(Central and Northern Europe)
Throughout Europe, dairy-farming communities made their own butter until very recently. Even in Britain, food historian Dorothy Hartley was able to record butter-making procedures–along with advice that a dairywoman’s hands should be smooth as butter, white as milk, and cool as spring water–in the post-war1950s:
‘In all England I hardly know a craft that varies more than making butter. It was made from milk cooled in round flat milk pans, the cream taken off with a skimmer of porcelain or a shell. Some block-tin milk pans are in use now, there are a few earthenware ones and glass ones which may be found with luck; and there’s many a bird-bath in a country garden that was once a square, built-in marble milk-cooler, and the pride of the dairy. Of the old, tall, plunge churns there is nothing left but their shape and name in the present-day iron milk ‘churns’ of railway and lorry … There is much ‘traditional’ usage involved with the ‘practical’ in dairy work. Wool and cloth must not come into the dairy; old linen for the wood; and scouring sack (hempen) for the floor. White sand from the brook to scour the floor with, and lime ‘set’ with skim milk to whiten the walls …’
English syllabub, known in Scotland as hatted kit, are both variations on what was the dairymaid’s privilege–fresh milk straight from the cow, still frothy and warm. In Georgian times, as country houses grew bigger and grander, fashionable ladies began to play dairymaid, and the cow was milked into a pail of wine, cream was added, and sometimes the juice of a lemon from the newly-erected greenhouse.
In 1940, Farmer’s Weekly carried a recipe for hatted kit contributed by an anonymous Scottish reader, who said the recipe was her grandmother’s, and that the old lady had had it from her grandmother.
‘Warm slightly over the fire 2 pints of buttermilk. Pour it into a dish and carry it to the side of a cow. Milk into it about 1 pint of milk, having previously put into the dish sufficient rennet for the whole. After allowing it to stand for a while, lift the curd, place it on a sieve, and press the whey through until the curd is quite stiff. Season with sugar and nutmeg before serving. Whip some thick cream, season it also with a little grated nutmeg and sugar, and mix gently with the curd. This dish can quite well be made without milking the cow into it, although direct milking puts a better ‘hat’ on the Kit.’
To make a modern syllabub–few of us have direct access to a cow–whip 600 ml/1 pint cold whipping cream till stiff. Stop before it goes grainy. Whisk in the juice of a lemon, a glassful of dry sherry and a tablespoon of brandy–they say a syllabub without brandy is like kissing a man without a moustache.
BUFFALO BUTTER
(Hungary)
Ellen Browning–cousin to poet Robert–a clever young graduate at a time when education was not desirable in a woman, recorded her travels in Hungary in the 1850s. Her journey was taken in order to restore her health and spirits after the death of her father. She complained of fleas and confessed to a fear of mice whose attentions she discouraged by wearing ankle-length woollen pantaloons under her gown, but in all other respects she enjoyed her life on the road–recommending the hospitality of her hosts and taking care to describe the exact form this took:
‘The dairy of the rich peasant was a funny-looking place. A wooden shelf ran round it to hold the brown earthenware pitchers of milk “till the cream rose”. On the earthen floor stood a multiplicity of articles, including garden implements, washing-tubs, baskets, and jars of wine, besides a tall upright churn and the wooden accessories for butter-making. The cream was churned fresh every morning during the summer, and the butter, after standing in water for a few hours, was beaten and then boiled down into pans and sent off weekly to Kolozsvar market. Butter in this form keeps well, and is used for culinary purposes all over Hungary. Once a week it was made into long rolls and taken in fresh to be sold as “breakfast butter”. No salt is ever put into this, and you buy it by the kilogramme fresh every day. It is generally delicious; so are the tiny cream-cheeses, done up in a scrap of muslin; some of them are flavoured with sage. Before leaving we were regaled with slices of kolaczid and glasses of pale yellow wine. The latter was a present from their doctor-son, who owned a vineyard near Maros-Vasarhely and came to see them every year….
‘If a man is rich enough to keep a buffalo or two, he and his family drink some of the warm milk for breakfast and supper, but cow’s milk is considered only as a food for pigs and calves, or to mix with other milk for making cheese. You can’t expect human beings to drink such poor stuff as that! They argue gravely. Even the household at ‘the big house’ would have jibbed had they been required to drink cow’s milk with their daily coffee. For my palate buffalo milk was too rich in quality and flavour, but we used to have it boiled and sent to the table half and half. Even then it tasted like cream.
‘By the way, “brigand’s coffee” is a beverage not to be despised. You roast the berries in the wood-ashes of your fire, wrapped in a maize leaf, bruise them whilst hot between two stones, drop them into the iron pot of boiling water, and cover it up for five minutes over the fire; then you pour it off into an earthenware pitcher onto a large lump of wild bees’ honey (there are scores of nests about in the forest) and stir it with a wooden spoon. It must be drunk either out of the mug, turn about, or in wooden bowls. We always drank our onion soup with the wooden spoons out of the same bowls; therefore we were never able to indulge ourselves with soup and coffee on the same day.’
CHEESE
Cheese is one of the great staples of the European rural larder. Produced from cow, goat, sheep or buffalo milk, it has the advantage of being easily made and stored–needing nothing but ingredients available to hand in any peasant community. All but the poorest peasant households managed to keep a cow or a few goats or sheep for milking. Making cheese was part of the household’s routine–some to be used fresh, some to be stored and some to be taken to market as a small cash crop. Natural curd-making agents vary from animal rennet–an enzyme present in the digestive tract of all lactating animals (including ourselves)–to infusions or extracts of plant material which has coagulating properties. Among these are fig-tree sap, artichokes and their wild ancestors, edible members of the thistle family, and, most notably, a group of nectar-producing insectivorous plants known as flytraps, among which the most widely used is butterwort.
Curd and whey cheese made from the milk of dairy cattle has long been an important source of protein in Scandinavia, its value explained by Henry de Windt travelling through Finland at the turn of the nineteenth century:
‘Dairy-farming is found to be more profitable and less risky than the raising of wheat and barley in a land where one night of frost sometimes destroys the result of a whole year’s patient care and labour …The chief occupation of the peasantry is agriculture–shovel and hoe prevail–cattle-breeding and dairy farming in natural meadows, good pasturage and plenty of water.’
Sheep’s cheese is no less valuable in southern Europe. Early in the last century, Eliza Putnam Heaton, travelling in Sicily for her health, reported for her American readers a conversation with the shepherds who lived in caves formed by the cooling lava of Mount Etna:
‘Riccota? Sure! What says the Signora?’
‘Zu Puddu!’ he shouted–as, in a yard where steaming kettles spoke of cheese-making, there stood up a dwarfish old man.
Agile as a lizard the shepherd came towards us, his little black eyes lively with curiosity. Behind him raced swart children and from a hovel peeped a bare-legged woman.
‘Riccota?’ she echoed. ‘I myself strained the milk through fern leaves and stirred it with wild olive twigs!’
Her great earrings shook as she trotted to the carriage side, fetching a wooden bowl full of curds made from ‘re-cooked’ whey.
…There was bread from wheat grown on Sambastiano’s land, and ground by his mother in a hand-mill. There was no butter, but ‘ricotta’, buttermilk curd dried in the sun and baked, food for Sicilian gods. There were fresh figs, bought at the fair, the early summer figs, sweeter and bigger than later cullings. There was wine pressed from Sambastiano’s grapes, not more than a year old, pure and delicious.
Brian Aldiss appreciated a cooked-curd sheep’s cheese he was offered in the 1960s, when travelling through the Macedonian mountains:
‘We visited two little Zadrugas where the famous cheese, kackavalj, is made. The process is not elaborate. When the milk arrives from the mountain top, it is already sour, as we had found. At the Zadruga it is boiled until it reaches a doughy consistency. This dough is worked and salted and rolled until a shine forms on it, when it is bundled into a wide wooden hoop to set and assume its round shape. Left in cold store for a fortnight, it sweats and matures and becomes ready to sell. In one of the two stores we looked round, some eleven thousand kilograms of cheese were coming up to standard. We were given hot rubbery chunks of kackavalj straight out of the boiling pan, as well as slices in its final state, when it is as cool and mature as James Bond. In the latter state, we found it not much inferior to a good Cheddar. In the former, it tasted like hot rubbery sheep’s cheese.’
CHEESES OFTEN USED IN COOKING
Bel Paese (Italy). A modern commercially prepared cheese first marketed in the 1920s, this cheese is white and mild, melts smoothly, and is used in cooking as a substitute for mozzarella.
Cabrales (Spain). Very pungent cow’s milk cheese dusted throughout with greeny-blue mould, traditionally wrapped in maple leaves and matured in limestone caves in much the same way as Roquefort. By the end of winter, the cheese is so pungent it’s usually eaten as a dip–a crema–cut fifty-fifty with fresh white curd cheese as soon as this becomes available in spring.
Cantal and La Fourme de Cantal (France). A cow’s milk cheese, first made in Roman times, from the mountains behind Marseille. A good matured cheese for melting, somewhere between a Cheddar and a Gruyère.
Caerphilly (Wales). A crumbly white cheese, matured for only 3 weeks. Known as the most digestible of cheeses, it is difficult to grate but crumbles easily. It melts well.
Cheddar (England). A matured cheddar made from unpasturised milk is one of the finest cheeses for cooking available anywhere. It is elastic enough to be easily grated and melts down beautifully smoothly. Farmhouse cheddar is still made in many dairies in the neighbourhood of Wells in Somerset.
Cheshire (England). Probably the most ancient cheese made in Britain. Its crumbly quality makes it difficult to grate, but it melts well and can be used in cooking to good effect.
Dunlop (Scotland). The Scottish variety of Cheddar, which it closely resembles and for which it can substitute in cooking. A very good cheese for melting.
Edam (Holland). The familiar round ball of cheese encased in red wax. Its imitators are many. A bland cheese, a little soft for grating, but nonetheless a very popular cooking cheese.
Emmental (Switzerland). One of Switzerland’s two great cheeses for melting, this is the one with the holes (the bacteria Propionibacterim stermanii is responsible for them). Made in huge wheels (which weigh at least 145 lb) in the valley of Emmental in the canton of Berne, and known since the 16th century. It grates superbly, and melts in characteristic long strings.
Feta (Greece). A soft salty, strong-flavoured cheese, white and crumbly, much used in salads in Greece and the Balkans. Originally made by the shepherds themselves from sheep’s milk.
Fontina (Italy). The cheese from the Val d’Aosta which is used to make a fonduta. A very good cheese for melting, which can substitute for Gruyère. The Danish version does not yet match up to the real thing.
Geitost (Norway). The dark brown caramelised cheese made from the whey remaining from the common cheese, boiled until the water is evaporated and then shaped into square cakes weighing from 1-2.5kg/2-5lbs. Paul du Chaillu left an account of its manufacture circa 1850:
‘It must stand at least a day before it is fit to be eaten, and is made only at the saeters, where wood is plentiful, for it requires a great deal of fuel. It is eaten in thin slices and with bread and butter–women and children are especially fond of it. The best is from goat’s milk. It can hardly be called a cheese, as it consists chiefly of sugar of milk.’
Geitost is sold in square bricks and can only be sliced effectively with a Scandinavian cheese slicer–a spatula-shaped instrument with a sharp blade embedded in the middle. It melts smoothly and is sometimes eaten thus with lompe or lefse, one of Norway’s wrap-breads, soft unleavened griddle-baked pancakes.
Gruyère (Switzerland). The second of the two great Swiss cheeses for melting, this is a cow’s milk cheese which dates from the 18th century. It is made in a smaller wheel (weight only around 80 lb), has only a few small holes, and contains a higher fat content than the Emmenthal. The best Swiss fondue is made with a mixture of these two cheeses. Both melt in characteristic long strings.
Kefalotiri (Greece). The Greek cheese most used for grating and cooking. A hard, strong, wellflavoured goat’s milk cheese. Used as a seasoning as much as a food, it is sprinkled on salads, on grilled meat, on rice, and even over a plate of chips. One of the cheeses, a group which includes Raclette, Caerphilly, and Cheddar, which are used for roasting.
Laguiole (France). Made near Bordeaux and belonging to the Gruyère-Cantal family, this is excellent for melting.
Manchego (Spain). A hard, salty matured cheese, not unlike a pale Cheddar, with a straw-patterned dark rind. It grates well and cooks tolerably. A shepherd’s cheese made with sheep’s milk from the central plateau of La Mancha–from whence comes its name.
Mozzarella (Italy). The true mozzarella is made from buffalo milk and for cooking is usually used fresh. It is also eaten when dry and matured. This cheese cooks in an interesting fashion: it melts into a delicious rubbery sauce which pulls into characteristic long strings. It provides the best topping for pizzas.
Parmesan (Italy). The Italian’s favourite cheese for grating, Parmesan is used as an important flavouring agent as well as a food. This universally popular hard pungent cheese is supposed to have originated in the environs of Parma. The large wheels are coated with lamp black and burnt umber mixed with wine when it is 6 months old. After that, the older it is the better, within reason. Vecchio (old) has 2 years to come to maturity. Stravecchio (extra old) is fully three years in store. The oldest is Stravecchione which takes four years before it is ready.
Pecorino (Italy). Made from ewe’s milk, this cheese is used for grating when matured and hard–as it is in the year after it’s made. Replaces the costlier Parmesan.
Requeijao (Portugal). Fresh white whey cheese usually made with cow’s milk, much like ricotta. Used fresh to make cakes and pastries. Also eaten with mermelada–quince jam or a tomato jam flavoured with cinnamon.
Valais Raclette (Switzerland). This cheese, made only in the canton of Valais, is used for toasting. A large piece of cheese is speared on a knife and held over an open fire (special little single-bar fires now substitute for this in restaurants), and the crisp sizzling crust is sliced straight onto freshly toasted bread. Eat immediately of course, with a draught of white wine from neighbouring Neuchâtel.
Roncal (Spain). A hard cheese matured and used for grating and cooking. Made in the northwestern province of Navarra from cow’s milk.
Ricotta (Italy). A whey cheese which can be eaten as wet white curds, not unlike cottage cheese, or dry, in which case it can be grated like Parmesan. Particularly used when fresh mixed with chopped spinach as a stuffing for pasta, and to make a delicious cheesecake for special occasions. Sometimes taken stirred into strong black coffee.
Sardo (Italy). The Sardinian version of Pecorino. Once a sheep-milk cheese, these days it’s made with ewe’s and cow’s milk mixed.
CREAM CHEESE AND PICKLE DIP
Liptauer (Hungary)
A bit of a hybrid, a mixture which gets its name from a sheep’s milk curd cheese made in Lipto in northern Hungary but which appears in some form or another in many other places. Austria makes its own version with Brimsen, a rich cream cheese from over the border in Czechoslovakia. The Italians of Trieste, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the end of World War I, achieved a similar effect with a sophisticated layering of mascarpone (fresh spring cheese) and gorgonzola (autumn’s stores), sold under the name of torta.
Quantity: Serves 4
Set out these ingredients for mixing according to preference:
250g/8 oz fresh cream or curd cheese (sheep, goat or cow’s milk)
Unsalted butter
Chopped onion
Mild or ‘sweet’ paprika (‘sweet paprika’ in Hungary)
Cayenne or chilli powder
Caraway seeds
Salt
Beer
Optional but worth considering:
Mild mustard, capers, gherkins, anchovies, grated fresh horseradish, chopped chives, lumpfish caviar
Provide plates and forks for mashing, plenty of thick-cut dark rye bread, and a bowl of radishes. Each diner makes up their own mixture and moistens it with a little beer. As a rough guideline, the proportion of fresh cheese to butter should be 2-1, the rest is all your own work.
Suggestions:
• In olive territory, very finely chopped black olives might replace the capers.
• The French version, pâté de fromage frais, blends 500g/1 lb curd cheese with 250g/8 oz thick crème fraîche with chopped garlic, parsley, chives, chervil, salt and pepper. Pack the mixture into a draining mould, a sieve lined with a clean piece of sheet, or a cloth suspended over a basin and leave to drain overnight in a cool place–the longer the cheese is left to drain the firmer it will be.
MARINATED GOAT CHEESES
Tommes à l’huile (Provence)
Trays of tommes, delicate-flavoured fresh curd cheeses made from renneted goat’s milk, are to be found on sale in all the markets of Provence. The preparation remains largely a home-farm industry, and the seller is often the cheese maker in person. The tommes are either sold fresh; or prepared with the fragrant local herbs, or parsley and garlic; or they are sold in various stages of maturity, with a chalky dry crust, or flowered by rich a dark dust of mould. The composition of the cheese has by law to contain more than 45% fat. The herbs and leaves which have pastured the goats flavour their milk: a seasoned palate in its own home area expects to be able to distinguish between cheeses made from a flock pastured on one or other side of the mountain.
Quantity: Serves 6
Time: Start a week ahead
1 heaped teaspoon dried savory
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon tarragon
½ teaspoon juniper berries
1 sprig rosemary
6 well-drained goat’s cheeses (weighing about 50g/2 oz each)
Approx. 1¾ litres/3 pints olive oil
Utensils: A large sterilised jar (rinse it out with brandy or any strong spirit)
Drop the savory and thyme into a large jar. Lay in the cheeses, sprinkling in the tarragon and juniper berries as you go. Lay the rosemary branch on top. Pour in the oil to cover–the cheeses must be completely submerged. Lid tightly and store in a cool place. The cheeses will keep for a long time, and can be replaced with new ones as you empty the jar. The oil is deliciously fragrant–use it to dress salads when you tire of replacing the cheeses.
Serve the cheese with a few drops of its own olive oil–it is particularly delicious with a salad of the large sweet tomatoes of Provence, dressed with olive oil, salt and a sprinkling of fresh summer herbs–basil or marjoram are perfect. Or slip under the grill to blister and bubble, then put onto a salad of mustardy young leaves.
CHEESE AND EGGS
Fonduta (Italy)
A northern Italian dish, at its most sublime in the company of a Piedmont truffle or two. If you can lay your hands on a fresh tuber, ask three of your best friends to share the feast. As with a pound of caviar, four is the maximum number to one good-sized truffle.
Quantity: Serves 4 favoured friends
Time: Preparation: At least an hour–no need to rush
250g/8 oz Fontina cheese (Gruyère, Emmenthal, Cantal or Cheddar can substitute)
300ml/½ pint rich milk (single cream is even better)
4 egg yolks
Optional 1 firm, touch-dry, white, Piedmont truffle
Utensils: You will need a basin, a large saucepan, and a food processor
Chop the cheese with a sharp knife into tiny pieces. This produces a smoother, less stringy melted cheese than if you grate it. A food processor will do the job in no time.
Put the cheese into a basin with the milk warmed to blood heat. Stand the basin over a saucepanful of boiling water. Cover it with a clean cloth. The milk and cheese must be kept warm on the side of the stove for an hour, so that the cheese melts very gently into the milk.
While you are waiting, make a plain risotto, or prepare thick slices of fresh bread for each of your guests. Put four plates to warm.
At the end of the hour whisk in the egg yolks with the cheese and milk. Put the saucepan on the heat and bring its water to the boil. Turn it down to simmer. Carry on whisking while the fonduta thickens over the simmering water. Don’t hurry it. You want a thick cream, not scrambled eggs. When the mixture has thickened so that it can comfortably blanket the back of a wooden spoon, take it off the heat.
Make sure your friends are all at table, each with a warm plate in front of him or her on which you have placed a thick slice of bread scattered with little pieces of fresh butter, or a mound of risotto.
Pour the fonduta over the bread or rice.
If you have a truffle, brush and wipe it delicately beforehand. If it’s very sandy you may have to rinse it. Sliver the tuber over each portion in front of your guests, using the cucumber slicer on your grater. You can get special truffle graters for this if you anticipate many such banquets.
MELTED CHEESE
Fondue (Switzerland)
One of my daughters collected this recipe from a classmate at school in the Languedoc. The two little girls–both blue-eyed blonds in a classroom full of dark-eyed dark-haired Gauls–became inseparable and Pascale, always known as ‘la petite Pascale’ since she was the youngest in a family of rowdy boys, would often spend the night in our farmhouse. For Pascale, home was a goat farm high in the hills. The Languedoc winter was bitter that year and our rented farmhouse was sometimes cut off by snow and floods, but the rough track to Pascale’s house was even more often blocked–giving Pascale an excuse to spend the night with her new friend’s family. On one of those dark and snow-bound evenings, Pascale offered to make us a real Swiss fondue, just like her grandmother made when she went to the Swiss canton of Neufchatel to spend the summer holidays with her mother’s family, from whom she had both her colouring and her skill in the art of fondue making.
Quantity: Serves 4
Time: Preparation: 30-40 minutes
250g/8 oz Gruyère cheese (the one with only a few small holes)
250g/8 oz Emmenthaler cheese (the one with the large holes)
1 teaspoon cornflour or potato starch
1 small glass kirsch
1 large loaf day-old bread or 2 baguettes
½ bottle dry white wine
1 garlic clove
Utensils: A small heatproof glazed earthenware casserole, a whisk, a stand with a spirit lamp or nightlight to keep the mixture bubbling (in Switzerland, it’s called the caclon and is kept just for making this dish)
Chop the two cheeses into tiny pieces. Pascale was very particular about this and explained that grating the cheese produces a tough, stringy fondue. Mix the cornflour into the kirsch. Cut the loaf into bite-sized cubes.
Lay the table: you will need a fork each, a plate of bread cubes, and large napkin apiece, and plenty more white wine (don’t chill it). Rub the caclon with the garlic to scent it. Pour in the wine and stir in the cheese. Heat the mixture over the kitchen stove very gently, stirring with the whisk until the cheese melts and bubbles. Mix in the cornflour and kirsch and cook gently until the mixture thickens and no longer smells of alcohol. Take the fondue to the table and put in on the lit spirit lamp to keep warm. Give it one more stir. If you were Pascale’s Swiss grandmother, you’d pop it on the embers of the fire and the family would crowd round.
Each diner now spears a cube of bread on their fork and stirs it once round the pot to cover it with cheese. Anyone who drops bread into the fondue has to fetch another bottle of wine. At the end there will be a beautiful crisp brown lacy crust waiting to be discovered at the bottom of the pot. This is the dentelle, the best bit of all, the cook’s perk.
Suggestions:
• Picky Swiss housewives consider a mixture of at least 3 cheeses desirable: the correct choice is either Jura or Gruyère, either Bagnes or de Combier, and Vacherin Fribourgeois. Cider sometimes replaces the wine.
Leftovers:
• Melt the cheese gently, whisk in an egg or two, and pour over a plate of potatoes boiled in their jackets. Delicious.
WELSH RAREBIT
Caws poibi (Wales)
Lady Llanover, the Mrs. Beeton of Wales and a stern teetotaller, tells the true story of the Rarebit from the distance of 1871:
‘Welsh toasted cheese and the melted cheese of England are as different in the mode of preparation as the cheese itself; the one being only adapted to strong digestions, and the other being so easily digested that the Hermit [hero of Lady Llanover’s discourse] frequently gave it to his invalid patients when they were recovering from illness. Cut a slice of the real Welsh cheese, made of sheep and cow’s milk; toast it at the fire on both sides, but not so much as to drop; toast a piece of bread less than a quarter of an inch thick, to be quite crisp, and spread it very thinly with fresh cold butter on one side (it must not be saturated with butter); then lay the toasted cheese on the bread, and serve immediately on a very hot plate. The butter on the toast can of course be omitted if not liked, and it is more frequently eaten without butter.’
Suggestions:
• Use Caerphilly if you can find it–the firm curds and slightly sour taste are perfect–otherwise a well-matured Cheddar or Cheshire cheese will have to do.
• The Swiss make a special cheese, Raclette, for toasting.
• The Greeks have a similar trick with slabs of kefalotiri, grilled to a crisp brown crust on a griddle set on the fire. The melted cheese, crusted on either side, is served immediately, piping hot, with a lemon quarter to squeeze over, bread to accompany, with a little glass of ouzo–no ice or the liquor makes a tight little ball in your stomach–to wash it down.
CHEESE AND POTATO FONDUE
Aligot (France)
A rich, creamy potato-thickened fondue, the traditional winter supper on France’s high central plateau. It’s also the wedding dish in the Auvergne, says Peter Graham in Mourjou, the Life and Food of an Auvergne Village (Viking, 1998). No meat is included, so it’s perfect for vegetarians. As with all such peasant staples, every household has its own recipe. Feel free to adapt and refine.
Quantity: Serves 4-6
Time: Cooking: 30 minutes
6-8 medium-sized mature potatoes (more, if you’re hungry)
1 garlic clove
350g/12 oz mild full-cream mould-ripened cheese–tomme or a young camembert
250g/8 oz butter
150ml/¼ pint thick (double) cream
Salt
Utensils: A large saucepan, earthenware or enamel cooking pot, wooden spoon for beating
Scrub the potatoes but don’t peel them. Boil them in their jackets in plenty of salted water until tender–20-30 minutes, depending on size. Skin them and mash them and keep them hot on the side of the stove.
Meanwhile, cut the cheese into fine slivers (include the rind if the cheese is quite young–but suit yourself).
Rub an earthenware or heavy enamelled cooking pot with a cut clove of garlic. Pour in the butter and cream, set it on a low heat and bring it gently to the boil, beating in the hot mashed potatoes. Add the cheese all at once and beat it with a wooden spatula, lifting it higher and higher to incorporate as much air as possible.
Serve the purée as soon as it has risen–it’ll look light and white and as smooth as cream–or it will lose its texture. Dish it up in hot bowls and eat it with a spoon. There may be bread for dipping and mopping, but this is not essential.
CHEESE PASTRY PUFF
Gougère (Northern France)
This dish–basically a cheese-flavoured choux pastry–provides the perfect partner for the wonderful wines of Burgundy; some say it was invented precisely with that purpose in mind. Take the cork out of the bottle–there’s just time for it to breathe while you cook the gougère. You will never have a better excuse for drinking it.
Quantity: Serves 4
Time: Preparation: 30 minutes
Cooking: 35 minutes
300ml/½ pint water
100g/4 oz butter
250g/8 oz flour
4-5 fresh eggs
250g/8 oz strong cheese (Comtois or Gruyère is best, cheddar will do)
Salt and pepper
Utensils: A saucepan and a baking tray, an electric mixer will save you trouble
Put the water to boil with the butter, chopped in small pieces. When all has melted together and come to a rolling boil, take it off the heat and beat in the flour. Put it back on the heat and beat the mixture until it leaves the sides of the pan–which it will swiftly do.
Remove the pan from the heat and allow the dough to cool for a moment while you chop two-thirds of the cheese into small pieces, or grate it through the rough grater. Cut the remaining piece of cheese into fine slivers. The dough will by now have cooled down enough to beat in the eggs one by one. This is easiest to do in a mixer–the dough is at first somewhat reluctant to accept the eggs. Persist: the dough will soon be easier to work. Judge how many eggs you put in by the appearance of the mixture–when finished it should be light, shiny, and firm but soft, so that it holds its shape but drops from a spoon. Beat in the chopped cheese (reserve the slivers). Add a teaspoon of salt and plenty of freshly ground black pepper.
Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C/Gas 4.
Butter a baking tray. Use two tablespoons to drop egg-shaped (and sized) dollops of the pastry on the buttered tray in a circle, each dollop to overlap the other. Smooth the top so that you have a round ring. Sprinkle with the cheese slivers. Put the pastry to bake for 35-40 minutes.
Serve the gougère warm. Accompany with a plate of charcuterie: a few slices of raw ham cut quite thick, rosy slivers of garlic-flavoured sausage, perhaps a slice of a rough pâté; and a bowl of well-washed, scarlet-skinned radishes still tied into a bridesmaid’s posy; and a salad dressed with walnut oil and salt. No vinegar in the salad to spoil that beautiful bottle of Burgundy.
CHEESE PASTRIES
Tiropiti (Greece)
The Greeks love to use cheese in their cooking. These little fried pastries, often served to favoured visitors, are traditionally accompanied by a tumbler of water, a small glass of ouzo, and a little cup of strong black coffee.
Quantity: Makes enough for 6
Time: Preparation and cooking: 40 minutes
100g/4 oz kefalotiri (or another strong cheese like Parmesan or cheddar)
250g/8 oz feta cheese (a milder cheese like ricotta can be used instead)
2 eggs
2 tablespoons clarified butter (melted butter poured off the whey)
1 packet filo dough or your own made with 250g/8 oz flour, 4 tablespoons olive oil and 2 eggs plus a little water
Oil for frying
Utensils: A bowl, small pan, deep frying pan and a draining spoon
Make the stuffing first. Grate the kefalotiri. Mash it with the feta and the eggs.
Put the butter to melt. Prepare the filo: either knead and roll the dough, or if using ready-rolled filo, lay out a dozen sheets–be careful to keep them covered so that they do not dry out and become unmanageably brittle. Cut into long strips, about 7cm/3 inches wide and the full length of the pastry. Cover again.
One by one, brush each strip with melted butter, place a teaspoon of the filling in one corner, and fold it over to make a triangle. Fold over and over diagonally until you have a neat little triangular cushion. Continue until you have finished up the rest of the filling and the pastry.
Put on a deep pan of oil to heat. When a faint blue haze rises, test it by throwing in a cube of bread: if it turns golden immediately, the oil is hot enough. Slip the pastries a few at a time into hot oil.
Alternatively, brush them with more melted butter, and then bake them in the oven, 400°F/200°C/Gas 6, for 15-20 minutes until they are puffed up and golden. Delicious with a plate of tomatoes dressed with black olives, oregano and mild onion, maybe with a few peppery leaves for the sake of the digestion. To complete a summer supper, a bowl of strawberries dressed with a squeeze of ripe lemon (very Greek), followed by a tiny cup of coffee and a piece of loukhoum–Turkish Delight–from the Greeks’ least-favourite neighbours.
Suggestions:
• The Turks make the same thing in the form of a small strudel–just tuck the sides over the stuffing and roll it up, then fry or bake as above.
CRETAN CHEESE PIES
Skaltsouina
Cheese pasties flavoured with mint–a herb popular throughout the Middle East. Cretan-style cheese pies can be sweet or savoury, fried or baked. For the sweet version, fill them with soft curd cheese mixed with sugar and nuts and flavour with cinnamon.
Quantity: Serves 4
Time: Preparation: about an hour, including 30 minutes rest time
Cooking: 20 minutes
The pastry
250g/8 oz plain flour
Pinch of salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
4 tablespoons water
Filling
350g/6 oz feta cheese, crumbled
1 medium-sized onion or 4-5 spring onions, very finely chopped
1 beaten egg
2 tablespoons finely chopped mint
1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
To finish
Olive oil for frying
Utensils: A bowl, sieve, rolling pin, cloth or plastic bag, a frying pan, a draining spoon, kitchen paper
Make the pastry first: sieve the flour with the salt into a bowl. Make a dip in the middle and pour in the oil. Work in enough water to make a soft, pliable dough. Knead till smooth. Cover with a clean cloth or drop into a plastic bag and leave in a cool place to rest for 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, mix all the filling ingredients together.
Roll out the pastry thinly. Using a coffee saucer as template, cut into rounds. Drop a teaspoon of the filling onto one half of each round, damp the edges and fold over into halfmoon shapes.
Heat a finger’s depth of oil in a frying pan and fry the pasties until golden brown–allow about 2 minutes on each side. Serve piping hot, straight from the pan.
CROATIAN BREADED CHEESE
Pohovan kavalj
All cheese-making communities have melted cheese dishes–rarebits, fondues and the like–as a method of using up store cupboard cheese at the end of winter. In the Balkans, a plain fondue–melted cheese softened with butter or cream, sometimes combined with little cubes of crisp-fried bacon–is served in individual earthenware bowls rather than a single pot, and eaten with a spoon. The most common Balkan cheeses–sir and sirene–are white cut-curd (cheddared) cheeses similar to the Greek feta which crumble easily and are more suitable for eating raw. For this dish, you need a cooked cheese which keeps its shape when melted: locally, this would be kashkaval, a matured pressed cheese. Similar recipes are found as far north as Slovakia, where it comes with a creamy little dip billed as sauce tartare but made like an old-fashioned English salad cream–a custard sharpened with vinegar.
Quantity: Serves 6-8
Time: Preparation and cooking: 40 minutes
500g/1 lb hard cheese (kashkaval, gruyère, cheddar), rind removed
2-3 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon paprika
2-3 eggs
Very fine breadcrumbs (fresh or dried)
Olive oil or clarified butter for deep frying
Utensils: 3 plates, a frying pan, a draining spoon, kitchen paper
Slice the cheese quite thickly. Mix the paprika and the flour on a shallow plate. On another plate, fork up the eggs. Spread the breadcrumbs on a third.
Rinse the cheese quickly in cold water, dust through the flour, dip in the egg, and press firmly into the breadcrumbs, making sure all sides are well coated. Leave to rest for 10 minutes, to dry the coating a little.
Heat the oil or butter till the surface shimmers and a faint blue haze rises. It must be good and hot to seal the outside before the interior melts. Slip in the breaded cheese. Remove with a draining spoon as soon as the outside crisps and browns. Drain on kitchen paper. Stand at the stove and serve straight from the pan–nothing is more indigestible than cold melted cheese.