JANE’S FIRST TRIP across the Atlantic was made in her early fifties. She returned thrilled and delighted by her discovery of New York, and made up for lost time by returning frequently to America. She was intrigued both by the paradox of the American diet, the co-existence of the truly dire and the remarkably high quality, and by a national cuisine so firmly rooted in the cooking of its European immigrants. She contemplated, and indeed began to work on a series on American cooking for the Observer, but sadly it fell by the wayside.
Nonetheless, she found occasion to explore to some extent the cooking of this huge continent, developing particular sympathy for the cooking of the southern states, and the simple but often elegant dishes of the Shakers. Nor did she dismiss the potential of the commonplace and obvious. Her last series for the Observer, ‘Slow Down Fast Food’, included articles on both hamburgers and baked beans. The recipes in this section are, therefore, as diverse and wide-ranging as the continent from which Jane drew them.
THOMAS JEFFERSON (1743–1826)
‘I am an Epicurean,’ wrote Thomas Jefferson. ‘I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us.
Happiness the aim of life
Virtue the foundation of happiness
Utility the test of virtue
Pleasure active and In-do-lent
In-do-lence is the absence of pain, the true felicity
Active, consists in agreeable motion: it is not happiness,
but the means to produce it.
Thus the absence of hunger is an article of felicity;
eating the means to obtain it.’
Unlike many people in power, Jefferson felt that such felicity was for everyone. This great and attractive man, author of the Declaration of Independence, third President of the United States from 1800 to 1809, and founder and designer of the University of Virginia, saw that his new country could be an earthly paradise, if its natural wealth were to be exploited according to the best of European civilization. As one writer has pointed out, in 1743, the year Jefferson was born, the English in America were a fringe of Europe on the seaboard, focussed on London, the interior was viewed more as a barrier than a treasure house; by 1826 when Jefferson died, there was a population of ten million Americans, the hinterland was being explored and inexhaustible raw materials were being found.
Jefferson’s ideas were advanced when he went as Minister Plenipotentiary of the new country to France in the 1780s. He determined to discover the most successful aspects of European life, so that America might benefit and avoid European mistakes. He travelled to Holland (where he bought a waffle iron), Germany, Italy, England (he was ravished by our gardens, but thought the architecture wretched), with the aim of discovering how our agriculture might be adapted to American circumstances. He sent seeds, plants, trees to the States, and had American seeds, plants and trees sent to friends in Europe.
On a journey into Italy, he bribed a porter to take out rice from Piedmont; then fearing that he might not succeed, filled his own pockets with rice – the penalty, had either been caught, was death, so jealously guarded was the export of rice from the Po valley. Many people thought Italian rice superior to Carolina on account of a special machine used to husk and clean it. Jefferson discovered that although quality control was severe, the superiority lay in the variety. Later in life he said that one of his greatest benefactions to America was the introduction of ‘dry’ rice that could be grown without unhealthily swamped fields. He would be pleased now, I think, to see the packets of Carolina rice on sale in every French supermarket.
At his ingeniously designed house of Monticello in Virginia, then at the White House, a French steward, Petit, and two French chefs, Julien and Lemaire, were employed to supervise and train his staff.
Jefferson’s elder daughter, Martha, acted as hostess – her mother had died when she was a child – and in 1791 he gave her for Christmas a recent augmented edition of a cookery book published in 1746, La Cuisinière bourgeoise, by Menon, one of the best and most popular books of the day. Martha had accompanied Jefferson to Paris, had been educated there, so understood well what the highest standards of cookery should be.
Jefferson deplored English guzzling, just as Sydney Smith did a generation later. He praised the French: ‘In the pleasures of the table they are far before us, because, with good taste, they unite temperance. They do not terminate the most social meals by transforming themselves into brutes.’ What would he say about American steaks these days, and ‘doggy bags’? At the White House and Monticello, he banned the habit of drinking healths at dinner. The health was bound to be returned, and that set up a chain of health-drinking that had half the guests under the table before the meal was through. This prevented conversation, and conversation round a well-supplied table was Jefferson’s idea of a civilized dinner.
Jefferson is sometimes criticized from hindsight by modern commentators for not being a more passionate reformer, especially in the matters of slavery and women’s rights. He treated his own slaves as well and better than other people treated their white servants, and phrases indicating his concern with the lot of all poor people, whatever colour they were, thread through his letters. He well understood that improvement was not to be effected by flannel and charitable bowls of soup, but by the increase in national prosperity that the energetic and powerful could achieve for the country. He did not regard poverty as immutable, or the just reward of idleness.
From a famous passage in a letter to Lafayette, his attitude is clear: he urges Lafayette first to get to know the condition of the provinces – a matter in which French governments have not excelled – ‘you must ferret the people out of their hovels as I have done, look into their kettles, eat their bread, loll on their beds under pretence of resting yourself, but in fact to find out if they are soft. You will feel a sublime pleasure in the course of this investigation, and a sublimer one hereafter, when you shall be able to apply your knowledge to the softening of their beds, or the throwing of a morsel of meat into their kettle of vegetables.’ [Food with the Famous]
4 large shallots, finely chopped
45 g (1½ oz) unsalted butter
1¼ kg (2½ lb) good carrots
1¾–2 litres (3–3½ pt) chicken stock
salt and freshly ground black pepper
125 ml (4 fl oz) whipping cream
2–3 tablespoons chopped chervil
Sweat the shallots in the butter over a low heat. Scrape or peel and dice the carrots. Add them to the shallots and stir thoroughly. Continue to cook gently for about 10 minutes, stirring from time to time. Add stock to barely cover the carrots and simmer until tender. Put through a mouli, dilute further to taste and season.
Whip the cream until thick but not stiff. Season and add the chervil to taste.
Reheat the soup without boiling and divide between very hot bowls. Float spoonfuls of the chervil cream on top. [À La Carte]
1 pumpkin or other winter squash, about 20 cm (8 inches) in diameter and 18–20 cm (7–8 inches) high
2 tablespoons very soft butter
sea salt, pepper
1 medium onion, sliced thinly
60 g (2 oz) long grain rice
generous ¾ litre (1½ pt) chicken stock
freshly grated nutmeg
either 4 bacon rashers, crisply fried, crumbled
2 tablespoons grated Mozzarella cheese
or 125 ml (4 fl oz) double cream
1 heaped teaspoon chopped chives
A recipe from Evan Jones’s magnificent and informative book, American Food.
Cut a lid from the stalk end of the pumpkin or squash, then remove the seeds and cottony fibres (it is easier to do this with your hand rather than a spoon). Rub inside the walls with the butter, then sprinkle them with salt and pepper. Put in the onion and rice. Set the pumpkin in a pan or ovenproof dish. Bring the stock to boiling point, pour it into the pumpkin and replace the lid. Bake for 2 hours at gas 5, 190°C (375°F). Remove the pumpkin – or squash – from the oven, and with a pointed spoon scrape some of the pumpkin flesh from the walls into the soup. Taste and correct the seasoning. Add the nutmeg to your liking – a good pinch will probably be about right. Either scatter the bacon and cheese on top, or heat the cream and pour that in with the chives. Replace the lid and bring to the table. As you serve out the soup, be careful to scrape in more of the pumpkin so that everyone has a good share.
Like baked pumpkin and carbonada criolla, this makes a most attractive dish if you are careful to pick out a perfectly-formed and unblemished squash or pumpkin. If you want to prepare this soup for a large party, it is prudent to make it with several pumpkins rather than one huge one, which will certainly crack with the weight of the stock before it is ready. [Vegetable Book]
1 kg (2 lb) fish bones and trimmings
¾ litre (1¼ pt) water
125 g (4 oz) salt pork or green streaky bacon, diced
250 g (8 oz) chopped onion
1 tablespoon flour
600 ml (7 pt) scalded milk
1 teaspoon sugar
500 g (1 lb) potatoes, cubed
1 kg (2 lb) mussels or 4–6 scallops
salt, cayenne pepper
chopped parsley
4 dessertspoons double cream, or 90 ml (3 fl oz) single cream
Chowder sounds uncompromisingly North American to us – Newfoundland chowder, Manhattan chowder, New England chowder. In fact this old one-pot meal of fish, potato, onion and salt pork was taken across the Atlantic by Breton sailors searching for cod. Like their wives at home they made it in a huge iron chaudière (in other words, a hotpot or cauldron, anglicized in the eighteenth century to ‘chowder’). Circumstances demanded the substitution of ship’s biscuit for potatoes; but once the dish settled down on the eastern seaboard of Nova Scotia and New England, potatoes went back into the pot. In time a new local ingredient, milk, was added to enhance the stew, where a Breton cook would have used, and still uses, cider or wine.
I like these satisfying dishes of the pre-oven age. Like Lancashire hotpot or Irish stew or Welsh cawl, fish chowders are easy to prepare and very easy on cost (what could be cheaper than this recipe?), yet they make the most of the simple ingredients. They have a basic goodness which pleases everyone.
Most fishmongers will give you a free handful of fish bones and trimmings, or will charge you at most a few pence for them. Put them into a heavy large pan with 600 ml (1 pt) of water and simmer for 40 minutes without seasoning, while preparing the vegetables. Put salt pork or bacon pieces into a heavy pan on a low heat. When the fat begins to run, put in the onion and brown lightly. Stir in the flour, then, bit by bit, the strained fish stock and hot milk. Add seasoning, sugar and potato. Cook until the potato is just done, but not in the least mushy.
Meanwhile open the mussels in 150 ml (¼ pt) water, remove from their shells and keep warm. Strain the mussel liquor into the chowder, correct the seasoning with salt and cayenne pepper, and simmer for a moment or two. Just before serving add the chopped parsley, mussels and cream.
If scallops are used, remove the coral. Slice the white part and add to the chowder when the potatoes are almost done. Simmer for 5 minutes, correct seasoning and add coral. Simmer for another 3 minutes, then add parsley and cream and serve.
Toast and hot water biscuits are usually served with fish chowders. [Good Things]
1 kg (2 lb) ripe tomatoes
4 large eggs, beaten
125 ml (4 fl oz) milk
about 3 tablespoons sugar
salt, grated nutmeg
A recipe from a cookery book of the American Shakers, that puritanical sect born of the Quaker movement two centuries ago. The collection of favourite dishes is the serene opposite of what might have been expected from these Shaking Quakers, with their ecstatic song and dancing rituals, their gift of tongues, their strong Puritanism.
The first great leader, Mother Ann Lee, had worked as cook in the new Manchester Infirmary before taking a group to America in 1774. I suspect her experiences in the kitchens there must have been happy, because she and her followers developed a tradition of good food lovingly prepared from first class ingredients in clean, well-ordered surroundings. Plenty of eggs, cream, wholemeal bread, fruit, vegetables, honey, poultry, maple syrup, puddings flavoured with rose water, all their own produce, gave Shaker mealtimes an air of cheerful comfort – even if men and women sat at separate tables.
‘If we find a good thing, we stick to it’ was another Shaker principle. So they were still using European eighteenth-century recipes when they had been forgotten in their original countries. Sometimes a European recipe was adapted to a New World ingredient, as with this tomato custard, a living fossil of the kind one often comes across in American food.
Quarter, stew and sieve the tomatoes – add no water. Cool and add the remaining ingredients, adjusting the last three to taste. Pour into 6 buttered pots. Stand them in a pan of hot water and bake at gas 4, 180°C (350°F) until the centre is barely firm (it continues to cook as it cools). Serve warm or chilled, with or without cream. [Vegetable Book]
100 g (3–4 oz) each chick-peas, haricot beans and dark red kidney beans, all soaked separately
8 tablespoons chopped spring onion or onion
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
plenty of chopped parsley and chives
5–6 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon wine vinegar or lemon juice
salt, pepper, sugar
Serve as part of a salad meal, or on its own or with a hot spicy chilli con carne (page 349). You can vary this salad as you like; I often put in some black beans as well, or as a substitute if I am out of haricot beans. The salad can be made the day before you need it. If you do this, do not put in the parsley and chives until the day you eat it. An important point is to put the beans hot into the vinaigrette dressing, so that they absorb the flavour.
Cook the chick-peas for 2 hours, adding the haricot beans after 1 hour. Keep an eye on the pot, so that the haricot beans are not overcooked to bursting point. Cook the kidney beans separately for 1½ hours, as they dye the water and anything cooked with them (or use canned red kidney beans instead). Mix the remaining ingredients in a bowl, adjusting the seasonings to your taste. Put in the drained hot vegetables, turning them over well. Leave to cool down, then put in the refrigerator to chill. Scatter some extra parsley and chives over the top before serving.
This is a good and most beautiful dish, the colours and shapes of the beans are like a painting. [Vegetable Book]
2 large avocados, peeled, mashed
1 rounded tablespoon finely chopped onion
2 medium tomatoes peeled, seeded, drained and chopped
1 fresh green chilli, seeded and chopped (or chilli powder to taste)
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 tablespoon fresh chopped green coriander, or 2 tablespoons chopped parsley
lemon juice, salt, pepper, sugar to taste
A spiced creamy sauce from Mexico, the avocado’s homeland. It can be used as a dip, with toast, biscuits, pieces of raw vegetable, potato crisps. It can be served as a sauce with fish or chicken. Mexicans eat it with tortillas rolled round a well seasoned meat filling. The proportions of the various ingredients can be altered to suit your taste; the quantities opposite were given me by Elizabeth Lambert Ortiz, the expert in Mexican cookery. She often uses canned jalapeño or serrano chillis, rather than a fresh one: their flavour is milder and more aromatic from the canning liquid.
Mix together all ingredients. Put into a bowl, cover with plastic film if you wish to keep it overnight, and serve well chilled, with drinks or as a first course. [Vegetable Book]
2 large cos lettuces
2 large cloves garlic
salt
175 ml (6 fl oz) olive oil
3 slices white bread, cubed
2 large fresh eggs
juice of 1 lemon
30 g (1 oz) freshly grated Parmesan
pepper
Worcester sauce
So many stories and versions of America’s Caesar Salad seem to be in circulation, that one might think it was a dish of Roman antiquity. In fact it was invented in 1924, by Caesar Cardini, who ran a popular restaurant at Tijuana, just south of the American-Mexico border. The following and method came from his daughter, Rosa, and were given in Julia Child’s Kitchen.
The basis of the salad is prepared in advance, but the dressing and mixing are done at the table. If you can think of it in time, crush the garlic and salt into the oil for the croûtons, several days in advance. It is important that all the ingredients should be of first class quality.
Separate the lettuces. Pick out 6–8 leaves for each person, nicely shaped, unblemished leaves 8–18 cm (3–7 inches) long. Wash and dry them tenderly so that they do not break, then roll them in a cloth and put them in the refrigerator until you have completed the other preparations.
Next crush the garlic with ¼ teaspoon of salt and mix it with 3 tablespoons of oil. Put the bread cubes on a baking sheet and put them into a cool to warm oven to dry out; baste them from time to time with the garlic-flavoured oil, so that they become crisp all through but nicely browned. When they are ready, put them in a bowl on a tray. Julia Child gives a quicker method of preparing the croûtons. First toast the bread, then cut the croûtons and fry them for a minute in the strained garlic oil. So long as they end up rich and crisp all through and a nice brown, it doesn’t matter which method you choose.
Next put the eggs into quite a large pan of vigorously boiling water – it should not go off the boil so take the eggs from the fridge, if you keep them there, in good time. Boil the eggs for 1 minute only, then remove them to a bowl and put that on the tray with the croûtons.
Pour the lemon juice into a little jug. Put the cheese into a small bowl. Arrange them on the tray as well, along with the pepper mill, the salt cellar, the Worcester sauce and the rest of the oil in a second jug. You will need spoons, too.
Lastly unwrap the cos leaves and put them in a really large bowl so that there is plenty of room for turning them. You are also supposed to chill the plates for the salad.
To prepare the salad at table
If you are given to baroque flourishes in the dining room and take chafing and flaming in your stride, this is your moment. If you find such performances nauseating rather than fun, just go at it quietly while everyone is talking and with luck they will not notice what you are up to. The salad will taste the same.
First scoop under the salad with the salad servers. Then pour 4 tablespoons of oil over it. Move the servers to the back of the bowl, opposite to you, then bring all the salad over and up in a wave. Be careful you do not misjudge the movement and end up with the wave in your lap. This is why you need a big bowl and why you may find it easier to stand, rather than sit. Sprinkle on ¼ teaspoon of salt. Grind the pepper mill over it eight times, pour on 2 tablespoons of oil and turn the salad over again in the same way. Julia Child uses the word ‘toss’ – this puts me in mind of hay-making and cabers; I think it is more prudent to turn.
Pour on the lemon juice and six drops of Worcester sauce. Now break in the eggs, praying the thin shells do not crush to pieces in your hands or over the salad. Turn again twice, so that the lettuce is covered in the creamy egg and oil mixture. Sprinkle on the cheese. Turn again. Scatter the croûtons over all and turn twice.
Do not sit down yet. You have not finished. You now have to arrange the salad ‘rapidly but stylishly’ leaf by leaf on the chilled plates (which by now are unchilled, so there is little point in bothering in the first place, unless you are a speedy operator). At the side of the leaves put a few croûtons.
The approved manner of eating Caesar salad is to pick up the leaves with your fingers, asparagus style, then eat the croûtons with a knife and fork. Cloth napkins and small bowls of water for the fingers are essential, as the dressed stems of the lettuce are far more messy than asparagus. Serve it on its own as a first course. [Vegetable Book]
approx. 4 corn cobs, or 500 g (1 lb) corn grains
150 ml (¼ pt) each whipping and double cream, or 300 ml (½ pt) whipping cream
1 level dessertspoon sugar
salt, pepper
60–90 g (2–3 oz) butter
The most delicious of all fresh corn recipes, even better than corn-on-the-cob. It provides just the right amount of moisture and richness and buttery flavour. Try to use corn scraped from the cob. If you have to use the whole canned or frozen grains, break them down slightly in the blender or electric chopper. Do not overdo this: they should not be turned into a purée, but have a thick, clotted look when mixed with the cream.
Mix the corn with the cream, sugar and enough salt to bring out the flavour. Add a little pepper. Rub a gratin dish, or six small pots, with half the butter. Put in the corn cream and dot the remaining butter over the top. Bake in a warm oven, at gas 3, 160°C (325°F) for 30–45 minutes, until the sides and top are nicely crusted with golden-brown. Serve as a first course. [Vegetable Book]
6 fillets pompano
skin, bones and head for stock
750 ml (1¼ pt) water
1 shallot, chopped, or 1 heaped tablespoon onion, chopped
90 g (3 oz) butter
600 ml (1 pt) dry white wine
250 g (½ lb) crab meat
250 g (½ lb) shelled prawns
½ clove garlic, chopped
250 g (½ lb) onion, chopped
sprig of thyme
bay leaf
1 heaped tablespoon flour
2 egg yolks
salt, pepper
If you cannot buy pompano, do not despair. Use fillets of any good firm fish instead – John Dory, turbot or brill, salmon trout, rainbow trout, or bass. The rich crab sauce is excellent with this type of fish.
Season the fish. Simmer skin, bones etc., in the water for 30 minutes, strain into a measuring jug (there should be about ½ litre [¾ pt] of stock). Cook shallot in 30 g (1 oz) butter until it begins to soften; add fillets. When they are lightly coloured on both sides, pour in the wine and simmer until the fish is just cooked and no more. Strain off the wine and set it aside. Leave the fish to cool.
Meanwhile, lightly fry crab, prawns or shrimps, and half the crushed garlic in another 30 g (1 oz) of butter. Add the onions and the remaining garlic. Cook gently for 10 minutes, covered. Add herbs and 300 ml (½ pt) of the fish stock. Make a thick sauce in the usual way with the remaining butter, the flour and the stock. Incorporate the white wine in which the fish was cooked, and the crab and onion mixture. Thicken further with the egg yolks. Correct seasoning. Remove the thyme stalks and bay leaf.
If you want to present the pompano properly, cut six paper or foil hearts large enough to contain the fillets. (Otherwise cut six oblongs, about 23 × 30 cm [9 × 12 inches].) Brush them lightly with oil. Put a layer of sauce on one half of each heart, then the fish and more sauce. Fold over the other side and twist the edges tightly together to make a close seal. Put these parcels on a baking sheet; place them in a very hot oven (gas 8, 230°C [450°F]) for about 10 minutes.
Note: this is said, by Marion Brown in The Southern Cook Book, to be the genuine recipe from Antoine’s. I have seen variations elsewhere in which crab meat alone was used, with no prawns, and 125 g [¼ lb] of sliced mushrooms added to the onions.
There is no reason why such a delicious sauce should not be served with pompano, and other fish, which have been poached in white wine, without the en papillote finish. [Fish Cookery]
3 large avocados
lemon juice
300 ml (½ pt) thick béchamel sauce
2 heaped tablespoons grated Cheddar
1 heaped tablespoon grated Parmesan
3 tablespoons double cream
175 g (6 oz) peeled shrimps or prawns or crab meat
salt, pepper
breadcrumbs, melted butter
Here is the most successful way of serving avocados hot. The flavour is not lost in the brief cooking and blends deliciously with the shellfish and cheese sauce.
Halve the avocados and remove the stones. Enlarge the cavities, but leave a good firm shell behind. Cube the avocado you have cut away. Sprinkle it with lemon juice, and brush more lemon juice over the avocado halves, to prevent discoloration.
Heat two-thirds of the sauce, which should be very thick indeed as it is a binding sauce. Keep it well below boiling point. Leave the pan on the stove while you stir in the cheeses, gradually, to taste. The flavour should be lively, but not too strong. Mix in the cream and shellfish, with seasoning, and the avocado cubes. If the mixture is very solid, add the remaining sauce. You need to strike a balance between firmness and sloppiness; in the final baking the sauce should not run about all over the place, but keep the shellfish and avocado cubes nicely positioned.
Put the avocado halves into a baking dish. Divide the stuffing between the cavities, mounding it up. Scatter on the breadcrumbs and pour a little butter over them. Bake for 15 minutes at gas 6, 200°C (400°F) and complete the browning under the grill if necessary. Do not keep the avocados in the oven any longer than this, as they do not improve with prolonged heating. [Vegetable Book]
150 ml (¼ pt) double cream
150 ml (¼ pt) single cream
3 egg yolks
150 ml (¼ pt) Madeira or sherry
450–600 ml (¼–1 pt) cooked lobster meat, diced
salt, pepper
This is one of the best of all lobster dishes, expensive, easy to prepare and easy to eat. It’s credited to America, and it was first served at Delmonico’s restaurant in New York in the early 1890s. But, like crème vichyssoise glacée, it was the invention of a French chef, and it’s in the purest French tradition. The proprietor first called the dish after one of his wealthy clients, Mr Ben Wenberg, in particular because he had popularized the use of the chafing dish, i.e. cooking done at the table instead of in the kitchen, as in this recipe. Either Mr Wenberg did not appreciate the delectable compliment, or he fell out with the proprietor for some other reason, because the name was soon altered simply but unrecognizably from lobster Wenberg to lobster Newberg or Newburg.
Original Style
Using a shallow pan on a table cooker, heat the double cream to just under boiling point. Add the single cream beaten up with the egg yolks. When the sauce is thick (it must on no account boil once the egg yolks are added), pour in the Madeira, and stir in the lobster to reheat. Serve with rice.
With Boiled Lobster
Ingredients as above, plus 120 g (4 oz) butter
Heat lobster with 60 g (2 oz) of butter in a large pan. Pour in the wine and rapidly boil it down to half; draw the lobster to the side so that it doesn’t overcook. Stir in the double, then the single cream beaten with the egg yolks. Thicken over a low heat. Just before serving add the extra 60 g (2 oz) of butter cut into little pieces: they should melt into the sauce without cooking, to give it a glaze and extra flavour.
This makes a finer flavoured dish than the original chafing-dish recipe.
With Live Lobster
Ingredients as above, plus glass of brandy
Pound the coral with 60 g (2 oz) of butter, and set it aside. Cook the lobster, cut in pieces, in 60 g (2 oz) of butter until it turns red. Warm brandy, set it alight and pour over lobster in the pan. When flames have died away, add the Madeira. Finish the sauce as above, adding the coral butter at the end.
Best version of all. Brandy seems to have a special affinity with lobster. This recipe can be used for scallops. [Good Things]
1 kg (2 lb) cod fillet
salt
freshly ground black pepper
170 g (6 oz) red or white onions, chopped
1 celery stalk, chopped
3 spring onions, chopped
1 small green pepper, seeded and chopped
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
125 g (4 oz) lard, or 125 ml (4 fl oz) sunflower oil
60 g (2 oz) flour
250 g (½ lb) tomatoes, skinned, seeded and chopped
90 g (3 oz) tomato paste, or 2–3 tablespoons concentrated tomato purée plus some chopped dried tomato
150 ml (¼ pt) red wine
¼ teaspoon ground allspice
2 teaspoons Tabasco or cayenne pepper to taste (optional)
a few fresh basil leaves (optional)
1 kg (2 lb) cod heads, bones, filleting debris, plus shellfish debris if available
2 large cloves of garlic, unskinned, crushed
250 g (½ lb) red or white onions, unskinned
1 can of passata, plum tomatoes, or 500 g (1 lb) fresh tomatoes, quartered
6 sprigs of parsley
1 bay leaf
the leaves of a head of celery, or 1 large stalk, sliced
½ teaspoon thyme leaves
½ teaspoon marjoram
1 small hot chilli or cayenne pepper
plain rice, boiled
slices of bread
First make the fish stock by putting all the ingredients into a large pan and adding 2½ litres (4 pt) of water. Bring to the boil, then lower the heat to maintain a gentle simmer for around 30 minutes. Taste occasionally, remove the chilli when the brew is fiery enough for your taste, and strain the stock.
Meanwhile, cut the fish into wide strips and season them. Mix the chopped onions, celery, spring onions, green pepper and garlic in a bowl.
Your next operation is to make a roux. You may think you know how to do this, since a roux is the standard basis for a number of classic sauces, but a roux is a different matter altogether in Louisiana, and a major flavouring item. It can be tricky, and should it turn a speckled burnt colour you have to throw it away and start again. The point is that by careful cooking and unremitting steadiness, you can progress from a light yellowish roux, to a golden brown one, and from that to a rich, almost mahogany, brown colour. There you stop for this particular recipe.
Set a small, heavy, iron frying pan on the heat with the fat or oil. With larger pans, make a bigger quantity of roux and set what you do not need aside in the refrigerator. When the oil is very hot, stir in the flour and keep stirring. Raise the pan from the heat often. Gradually you will achieve a deepening colour. When you have a rich brown, remove and mix in the bowl of chopped vegetables – this has the effect of lowering the temperature and preventing deeper colour. The roux stiffens as it cools. Put the pan back on a low heat and cook until the vegetables begin to soften. It helps to add some of the tomatoes to slacken the mixture.
When the vegetables are ready, transfer them to a large pot, add the remaining tomatoes and tomato paste and 1 litre (1½ pt) of the fish stock, the wine and the allspice. Simmer for 1 hour, stirring to prevent any risk of sticking, and adding extra stock to prevent over-thickening. Taste towards the end, season, and add the Tabasco or cayenne pepper if extra heat is required. All this can be done in advance, indeed the deep red sauce with its special flavour from the dark roux seems to improve with standing for a few hours.
Just before serving, bring the sauce – perhaps more of a soup than a sauce – to boiling point. Put in the fish, stir the pieces about and remove from the heat after about a minute. The fish cooks surprisingly quickly. It is better to stir it about in the very hot liquid off the stove to complete the cooking, rather than risk it being overdone and becoming mushy.
Check for seasoning for the last time, and if you wish, tear up the basil leaves into the court-bouillon and serve.
To serve: heap the boiled rice into bowls, pour over the court-bouillon and serve with the same wine that was used in the cooking and plenty of bread. [À La Carte]
½ large onion, thinly sliced
1 small leek, thinly sliced
30 g (1 oz) unsalted butter
30 g (1 oz) flour
1 litre (1¾ pt) fish stock, flavoured with fennel, salt, pepper, nutmeg
500 g (1 lb) skinned, filleted haddock, whiting, hake, ling or conger eel, cut up
375 g (¾ lb) sprouting broccoli or calabrese
about 6 tablespoons cream (optional)
A fish soup that can be made by anyone, anywhere.
Sweat onion and leek in the butter until soft: do not brown them. Off the heat, stir in the flour with a wooden spoon. Cook gently for a few minutes, stirring. Remove from the heat again and pour in most of the stock. Simmer for 10 minutes, season with pepper and salt and add fish. Cook for just 1 minute and leave to cool. Blend at top speed until smooth, or process and sieve.
Meanwhile, peel broccoli or calabrese stalks, cut off some flowering heads for a final garnish and chop the rest. Cook the chopped part in just enough lightly salted water to cover. Drain, keeping the liquor, and refresh under cold water (to set the bright colour). Mix with some of the liquor and sieve into the fish soup, blending again if necessary. Dilute to taste with remaining fish stock and broccoli liquor. Reheat until just below boiling point, add cream, check seasoning and garnish with steamed broccoli flowers. [Observer Magazine]
6 red snappers (about 1½ kg [3½ lb]), cleaned
seasoned flour
1 lemon
375 g (12 oz) chopped onion
3 stalks celery, chopped
1 chopped green pepper 175 g (6 oz)
60 g (2 oz) butter
2 cloves
grated rind of the lemon
60 g (2 oz) chopped parsley
½ teaspoon each rosemary and thyme
1 bay leaf
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 × 400-g (14-oz) cans tomatoes
1 tablespoon Worcester sauce
Tabasco
salt, freshly ground black pepper, sugar
Make the sauce first, taking trouble to get the reduction and seasonings to your taste before baking the fish. It’s an elaborated version of the sauce créole.
Put onion, celery and pepper into a frying pan with the butter. Cook gently until soft. Add cloves, lemon rind and herbs, including garlic. Quickly drain the tomatoes and add them (keep the juice for another recipe). Leave this mixture to boil down busily for about 20 minutes, or until it has lost its wateriness and become a liquid purée. Stir in the Worcester sauce, then add the rest of the seasonings to taste.
Sprinkle the fish with seasoned flour and place them in an ovenproof baking dish. Arrange slices of lemon on top, two to each fish, and pour the sauce round and between them.
Bake in a moderate oven gas 4, 180°C (350°F) for about 20 minutes until the fish is done. Baste occasionally.
Note: one large red snapper can be used instead of six little ones; it will take longer to cook: 35–45 minutes.
Some recipes suggest making the sauce above in half-quantity, and adding enough breadcrumbs and egg to bind it to a stuffing. Chopped shrimps and prawns are sometimes mixed in as well. Filled with this mixture, the fish are then baked in the juice from the tomatoes, plus a little water and lemon juice, or simply in a well-buttered dish. [Fish Cookery]
A speciality of Venice, and of the southern coast of North America. They are not a separate species, but crabs which are ‘moulting’ – i.e. they have shed their shells, and the new one is still fragile. This sudden loss of weight means that they rise to the surface and can easily be caught. The Venetian molecchie, a May delicacy, are tiny, about 3–5 cm (1–2 inches) across. They are washed, then soaked for a while in beaten egg (which they largely absorb). Just before the meal, they are drained, shaken in flour and deep-fried. One eats the whole thing, shell, claws, the lot, and it tastes like a crisp delicious biscuit.
In America the crabs are larger – 2 or 3 are a reasonable portion – but they are treated in much the same way. Sometimes they are grilled and brushed with melted butter. Tartare sauce or a similarly flavoured mayonnaise is served with them. Here is a more elaborate recipe from New Orleans Cuisine, by Mary Land.
Crabs Seasoned in Rum
‘Select six soft crabs – female are best. Rinse live crabs gently in lemon water. Place in a crock with enough Myers rum (three-fourths), milk (one-fourth), whole cinnamon and nutmeg to cover. Let crabs stay in liquid two or three hours. If they show evidence of dying remove at once. Clean crabs by removing “dead man” and feelers. Rinse gently in cold water. Place crabs back in milk-rum liquid for half hour. Dry gently and dip in egg batter, then in rolled Corn Flakes. Sauté about ten minutes in sweet butter.’ [Fish Cookery]
THERE’S THE BEEF
The St Louis World’s Fair and 1904 are the place and date Americans give for the birth of the hamburger. It seems to make sense – vast crowds to be fed as rapidly as possible – but, in fact, it is wrong. The hamburger was already an item of popular eating nearly two decades earlier, at least in Washington State. There, at Walla Walla, a country town over 200 miles south-east of Seattle, in the 5 January edition of The Union of 1889, the hamburger makes its first printed appearance – ‘You are asked if you will have “porkchopbeefsteakham andegghamburgersteak or liverandbacon”.’ This breathless swoosh of an entry suggests familiarity, and so an even earlier origin.
Why the name? It means, of course, ‘from Hamburg’, one of the main ports of emigration from Germany to the States (it gave its name to no less than seven different settlements in the new country). But why Hamburg in Germany, since almost every other European country that sent emigrants to America had developed meat balls and patties, to make less tender cuts of beef more palatable and quicker to cook?
I would suggest, but this is pure guesswork, that it was a compliment to the German community which in the States – as in nineteenth-century Britain – was pre-eminent for its high-quality butchers’ shops, its delicatessens and resourceful cooked-food shops. Perhaps it was some German butcher, homesick for Hamburg, who had the idea of putting a beef patty into a toasted bun, thereby transforming it from a main-course-with-vegetables into a convenient sandwich for selling at markets and fairs and the fast-food diners required by the growing industrial towns. Anyway the hamburger took off, and in the 1920s chains of hamburger bars got going.
Incidentally, the sandwich, the first modern fast food, we owe to John Montagu, the charming but corrupt Fourth Earl of Sandwich. Sometimes in the early 1770s his passion for gambling kept him at the card table for twenty-four hours. To keep going, he shouted for slices of cold beef to be put between slices of toast. The convenience of the idea caught on and until recent times the sandwich was primarily filled with some kind of meat. The hamburger seems to have been the first hot sandwich.
Another point of success for the American hamburger was, I suspect, the mincing machine. Chopping meat with a sharp knife can – for an expert – be quite a speedy business, but most cooks aren’t experts and special chopping knives and machines were invented as early as the seventeenth century in Britain. The really foolproof chopper was the sausage machine of the midnineteenth century, with a handle and barrel that contained rotating blades. This could be operated by the most inexperienced butcher’s boy or scullery maid and was soon developed into the meat-mincing machine that we all know. In a Spong catalogue of the early 1860s, such machines are catalogued with testimonials from grand kitchens, including one from the head chef of Buckingham Palace. As many of our labour-saving machines were much improved at this period in the States – egg-whisks for instance – perhaps they were first with these mincing and sausage-making machines?
The third point of success with the American hamburger is the fine quality of the beef used. At butchery counters you can buy hamburger meat, sirloin, round or chump steak, to make burgers at home. And there are diners and inns and bars and joints where the grillman prides himself and feels ‘some of the exhilaration of the soloist as he goes about his chores. The performance of the chef at the local diner,’ writes Ralph Gardner Jnr in Roadside Food, ‘is in stark contrast to what goes on at those multinational burger machines where the act of creation is invisible; there’s something sinister and totalitarian about a bushel of Styrofoam-encapsulated Big Macs sitting under a heat lamp … orders filled even before they are placed. In the act of the grillman moulding a burger to plump perfection, we see the modern world’s equivalent of the medieval artisan.’
How I agree. Our children once ganged up on me; my eating habits were too rarefied. Sophie was deputed to educate me in life’s realities. She took me off to a caff in Brighton, where she was living at the time, made me park the car and wait while she bought a couple of hamburgers for our lunch. As she handed mine over – it smelled of stale oil – cheap ketchup dripped on the gear lever. The bun turned woolly soft in my mouth. The meat was gristly and overcooked. Recently a nephew and his American wife were kinder. One Sunday they drove me out of New York to see the wonderful Mercer tile museum at Doylestown. We stopped for lunch at the old inn in the centre of town and they ordered cheeseburgers. A real treat. They were plump and pink in the centre. The bun was toasted and encircled with the correct embellishments: tomato, onion, lettuce, impeccable French fries. There was a jar of pickled gherkins, too. I didn’t see the grillman but I’m sure he was just as Ralph Gardner described. Even more delicious were the hamburgers we made at Broad Town for the purposes of this article, following a blend of my American niece’s instructions and Julia Child’s. It was one of the best lunches we ever had.
1 kg (2 lb) chuck steak
salt, pepper
flour for dredging
groundnut or sunflower oil
Optional extras: 2 teaspoons fresh thyme
2 tablespoons grated raw onion
2 tablespoons soured cream
1 egg, beaten
Go for the best organically produced beef you can find, or for Aberdeen Angus or Hereford or Red Devon beef – not just because of the good rearing, but because more trouble will have been taken in handling and hanging the carcase. Be choosy. A home-made hamburger should be a treat, bearing no resemblance whatsoever to a frozen beefburger or a Big Mac. Some people buy sirloin, rump or round, but chuck steak has an excellent flavour and a reasonable proportion of fat. As Julia Child says in her book The Way to Cook, a hamburger steak is not diet meat: it should consist of 80 per cent lean meat, 20 per cent fat. Although no seasoning is needed beyond salt and pepper, I agree with my niece that thyme makes a wonderful addition, and the other optional extras add to the succulence.
Chill steak until just firm in the freezer. It will then be easy to remove surplus fat and – very important – the connective gristle that might clog the mincer. Cut the meat and 20 per cent fat into 4-cm (1½-inch) strips. Feed them through the mincer with a medium to large plate. You will end up with just about 700 g (1 lb 7 oz) of hamburger meat.
For a basic hamburger, all you now need is a flavouring of salt and pepper. However, optional extras give an extra delicious result, even if you only add the thyme. Stir it in, adding onion and cream if you like. Use 2–3 tablespoons of egg to make mixture soft rather than sloppy. Taste and check seasoning.
To form hamburger steaks: Julia Child favours the 150 g (5 oz) hamburger (which means you will get 4 or 5 from the quantities above), but I find it better to divide the mixture into 6. Use moistened hands to form loose plump patties of a size to fit into the buns or muffins; they should be about 2 cm (¾ inch) thick. The meat should not be firmly impacted into a sharp-edged disc. Chill until required. Just before cooking, turn lightly in flour.
To cook hamburgers: have all the garnishings and sauces ready, the buns toasted. Brush a stove-top ridged iron grill pan, or a heavy cast-iron frying pan (e.g., Dutch oven lid, or skillet), with a thin layer of oil, and heat it up. Give the hamburgers 2–3 minutes a side.
If they are soft to the touch, they will be rare. If just springy, medium-rare. If you must have them well done, catch them before they are like rubber balls. In summer, the barbecue is ideal for cooking hamburgers. In winter, you will do better to follow the method above rather than use the domestic grill, which is never quite hot enough to get a juicy brown outside with a pink inside.
To serve hamburgers: this is where you need extra hands. On each warm plate arrange a slice of beef or Marmande tomato to one side, with a slice cut across a sweet white onion and half a large pickled gherkin cut – if you like – into a fan. Slit and toast the bun and put the base in the centre of the plate with a nice bit of greenery beside it, or on top. Then place the hamburger on the bun and position the top of the bun so that it tilts from the centre of the hamburger to the plate. If you are serving French fries or hash browns, put them on the opposite side to the tomato and onion. Serve ketchup, mustard or salsa separately.
‘Occasionally a misguided grillman will place the cheese on the bun instead of the burger and brown it under the broiler’ – Ralph Gardner Jnr again – ‘This is a crime in my book and probably warrants some form of community restitution. Cheese and burger must have time to get acquainted and to synergize in such a way that the cheese melts and runs down the side of the burger like lava down the slopes of Vesuvius.’
Make the hamburgers as above, but provide yourself with one square slice of Gruyère or Cheddar or Gouda per hamburger, just a little larger than the burger’s surface. When the hamburgers are cooked, lay the cheese on top of the hotter side so that it melts slightly and runs down the side. A moment under the grill or in a hot oven helps the melting. Garnish as above, adding coleslaw if liked.
Mr Gardner is also insistent on Coke with cheeseburgers. ‘Perhaps it’s because between bun and burger, fries, pickle and slaw you’re wedging so much food into your mouth at one time that only an industrial-strength soft drink can wash it all down and cleanse the palate for the next bite.’ I confess to preferring wine. [Observer Magazine]
500–725 g (1–1½ lb) meat, cubed
olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
2–3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 small green pepper, seeded, sliced
Colorado sauce (page 350)
1 tablespoon tomato concentrate (optional)
1 teaspoon ground cumin
125–250 g (4–8 oz) red kidney beans, cooked
salt, brown sugar
Buy stewing meat for this dish, beef, veal, mutton or pork, rather than the finest cuts. Underdone left-overs can be used, as well. Avoid minced beef. You can use tinned red kidney beans, they are delicious, but it is far cheaper to buy them loose and uncooked at a good grocery or delicatessen. Another alternative is to omit the kidney beans from the stew and serve them separately in a salad, or as part of three-bean salad (page 333).
Trim the meat where necessary and brown it in olive oil. Transfer to a casserole. Brown the onion and garlic lightly in the same oil, and scrape on to the meat. Add the pepper, sauce and just enough water to cover the ingredients. Cover tightly and leave to stew until cooked, keeping the heat low. Check the liquid level occasionally. By the end of the cooking time it should have reduced to a brownish red thick sauce. If it reduces too soon because the lid of the pan is not a tight fit, or you had the heat too high, top it up with water.
Last of all add the tomato if used, the cumin, the kidney beans if you are not serving them separately as a salad, with salt and brown sugar to taste. Simmer a further 15 minutes, correct the seasoning and serve with rice and a green salad. [Vegetable Book]
6-7 small dried red chillis, or 4–5 large fresh ones
1 large red pepper
1 large onion, chopped
1 large clove garlic
salt
A delicious sauce to use when making chilli con carne, rather than the chilli powder sold in small bottles. It can also be used as a marinading mixture.
If the chillis are dried, soak them in a little water for 1 hour, then slit them and wash out the seeds. Discard the stalks. Do the same with the large pepper. Purée with the other ingredients, using the soaking water if necessary to moisten the vegetables. If you use fresh chillis, you might need 1–2 tablespoons of cold water. Season with salt. You can keep this sauce in a covered container in the fridge for two days, or you can freeze it. [Vegetable Book]
500 g (1 lb) prepared sweetbreads
2 tablespoons flour
½ teaspoon paprika
30 g (1 oz) butter
150 ml (¼ pt) double cream
2–3 dozen oysters with their liquor
salt and mace to taste
3 tablespoons dry sherry
This American recipe is in the old European tradition of oysters with meat, from the days when oysters were a poor man’s food and able to be used as a seasoning.
Divide the sweetbreads into small pieces. Roll them in the flour and paprika mixed together, then fry them in the butter until they are a nice golden brown. Pour in the cream and make a sauce by stirring it well into the pan juices. Add the oysters and their liquor; when the edges begin to curl up the dish is ready. Season with salt, mace and sherry to taste.
Serve with triangles of bread fried in butter. [Good Things]
1 large or 2 small farm chickens, jointed
milk
seasoned flour
bacon fat or lard
2 tablespoons plain flour
½ litre (¾ pt) milk
4 tablespoons double cream
2 egg yolks
salt, pepper
1–2 streaky bacon rashers per person
60 g (2 oz) plain flour
2 tablespoons milk
a good pinch of paprika
a good pinch of cayenne
1 large egg yolk
¼ teaspoon salt
175 g (6 oz) drained canned or cooked corn
1 large egg white, stiffly whipped
This dish has lost its charm by over-exposure in cheap restaurants. At home, it tastes quite different and is a delicious way of serving chicken. The classic accompaniments are fried bacon and sweetcorn fritters. Sometimes I have had fried banana with it, too, which is not at all correct but popular with the children. Fried chicken Maryland is an ideal family dish.
Dip the chicken pieces in milk, then turn in seasoned flour. Brown them all over in bacon fat or lard. Transfer them from the pan to an oven dish. Cover it tightly and put into the oven at gas 4–5, 180–190°C (350–375°F) for 30 minutes, or until cooked. Add no liquid. With the pan juices make a sauce: stir the plain flour into them, cook for a moment or two, then pour in the milk and cream. Simmer gently for 15 minutes. Just before serving, when everything is ready, beat in the egg yolks and thicken without boiling over a low heat. Season. Grill the bacon rashers.
While the chicken is in the oven and the sauce simmering, make the corn fritters. Mix the ingredients in the order given, then drop tablespoons of thick batter into hot butter and fry until golden-brown both sides.
Arrange the cooked chicken, bacon rashers and corn fritters on a large hot serving dish. Put the sauce into a jug.
If you like the idea of banana as well, peel, halve and quarter three large ones, and fry the pieces gently in butter. The snag about this is that you have too many things to take care of at the last minute, unless you can call on some help for frying the bananas. [Vegetable Book]
250 g (8 oz) country ham, cubed
175 g (6 oz) chopped onion
175 g (6 oz) chopped celery
1 red or green sweet pepper, chopped, minus seeds
lard
up to one tablespoon tomato concentrate
500 g (1 lb) tomatoes, peeled, chopped
500 g (1 lb) okra, trimmed
salt, pepper
cayenne, or 1 dried chilli, chopped, with seeds
The difference between this recipe and the Mediterranean type of stew is the inclusion of peppers and chillis or cayenne, and a substantial piece of country ham (substitute smoked gammon or bacon, bought in a piece).
Stew the ham, onion, celery and sweet pepper in a little lard. When they are beginning to soften, raise the heat so that they colour lightly. Put in 1 teaspoon of tomato concentrate and the tomatoes. Stir for a moment or two, until the tomatoes begin to subside into a stew, then put in the okra and seasonings. Cover and simmer slowly until cooked, checking from time to time in case a little water is required. The okra should not be left high and dry, neither should they be completely covered with liquid. Taste and adjust the seasonings, adding extra tomato concentrate if it seems a good idea. [Vegetable Book]
250 g (8 oz) gammon rasher, cubed
1 farm chicken, jointed
125 g (4 oz) chopped onion
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 red pepper, chopped, minus seeds, or 1 dried chilli chopped, with seeds
375 g (12 oz) okra, trimmed, sliced
lard and any fat from the chicken above
1 tablespoon flour
250 g (8 oz) chopped tomato
1 tablespoon tomato concentrate
chicken stock or water
bouquet garni
salt, pepper, cayenne or Tabasco sauce
1–2 dozen oysters (optional)
parsley
Brown the gammon and chicken, onion, garlic, red pepper or chilli and okra in the lard and chicken fat. You will have to do this in batches, transferring each item as it colours to a large pot and adding more lard as necessary; start with the meat and colour it over a sharpish heat, then lower the temperature for the vegetables, so that they soften and do not become too brown.
When the last batch is ready, stir in the flour, cook for a couple of minutes, then add the tomato, concentrate and enough stock or water to make a slightly thickened sauce. Tip this over the contents in the large pot, adding extra liquid if need be, barely to cover the meat and vegetables. Put in the bouquet and seasoning (if you use chilli rather than red peppers, go lightly with the cayenne or Tabasco). Simmer, with the pot covered, until the chicken is tender – about 1 hour or longer. Meanwhile, open the oysters, being careful to save all their juice. Ten minutes before serving the gumbo, mix in the oysters and their liquor to heat through. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Remove the bouquet, and add a good chopping of parsley. Serve with boiled rice.
If you cannot afford oysters, use mussels instead. This is better than having no shellfish flavour at all. [Vegetable Book]
turkey or chicken joints for 6 people
salt, pepper, 1 level teaspoon thyme
butter
3 tablespoons brandy
250 ml (8 fl oz) dry white wine
juice of 1 grapefruit
2 whole grapefruit
This dish is best made with pink grapefruit. I approached it with caution as the mixture of poultry and grapefruit seemed an odd one, but it works well. The better the poultry, the better the result.
Season the joints with salt, pepper and the thyme. Leave for several hours or overnight.
Brown the joints in butter to a light golden brown, then flame with the brandy. Turn the pieces over in the flames. Now; Either: transfer the meat to a buttered ovenproof dish, dot it with butter and pour in the wine and grapefruit juice. Bake for about 1 hour at gas 5, 190°C (375°F), turning occasionally and removing breast joints when cooked. Or: add the wine and juice to the sauté pan, cover and leave until tender, turning the pieces over twice.
Meanwhile, peel thin strips from one of the grapefruit. Cut them into shreds and simmer 3 or 4 minutes in water: set aside for garnishing. Strip remaining pith and peel from both grapefruit, and cut the wedges of flesh out, freeing them of thin white skin and pips. Do this over a plate to catch the juice, which should be added to the liquid in the poultry pan.
When the poultry is tender, arrange it on a warm serving dish. Heat through the grapefruit segments in the pan juices and place them round the joints. Taste the juices, boil down slightly and add seasoning. Beat in a couple of tablespoons of butter, in little bits, and pour over the joints just before serving. Scatter the peel strips on top.
Cauliflower finished with butter and a chopped hot chilli goes well with this dish. [Fruit Book]
Weigh a packet of cranberries if the measure is not given on the wrapping, then tip them into a saucepan. Add water or orange juice to come almost to the top but not quite. The liquid should show through the berries without floating them from the base of the pan.
Simmer without a lid until the berries start to pop open – this takes place quite rapidly. The more berries burst, the softer and thicker the sauce will be. Four minutes gives the consistency we like.
Remove from the heat and stir in half the cranberries’ weight in sugar. Most people will find this sweet enough; too much sugar brings out the bitterness.
I find that a 175 g (6 oz) packet of cranberries makes enough sauce for 6 to 8 people. If you make more, it can be kept in covered jars in the refrigerator. [Fruit Book]
500 g (1 lb) haricot beans
180–250 g (6–8 oz) streaky bacon in a piece
bay leaf, sprig thyme, sprig parsley
salt, pepper
This is the easiest recipe for beans I know. It’s a good one, and cheap. All you need are two or three homely ingredients, an ovenproof pot (the Italian fagiolara does well, or a French storage jar, or stoneware jug), and a collection of open-air appetites.
Beans village style are the antique basis from which cooks evolved cassoulet in the Languedoc and Boston baked beans in North America. Locally produced French additions were tomatoes, onions, garlic, sausage, preserved goose and occasionally a ragoût of mutton. American additions reflected their trade – molasses, soft brown sugar and rum from the West Indies. People in the circumstances of those days, a century or two or three ago, could not consult books of international cookery for inspiration: they consulted their store-cupboards and kitchen gardens and cellars instead.
Soak the beans in the usual way. Tie the herbs together. Put all ingredients, except salt, into the cooking pot and add just enough cold water to cover. Add a lid of double foil, firmly secured to prevent steam escaping. Simmer in a slow oven, gas 2, 150°C (300°F) until the beans are cooked (1½–2 hours). Season with salt, at the end, as required.
1 green pepper, deseeded and chopped
1 large onion, chopped
2 large tomatoes, chopped
molasses (black treacle), salt and pepper to taste
Nearer the home of the kidney bean, cooks make use of other Southern ingredients – peppers, molasses and tomatoes. Being a hot substantial dish, these baked beans are best followed by fruit, say a chilled pear, or chilled melon.
Follow the ingredients and method for beans village style, but remove them from the oven when they are half-cooked. Take out the herbs, and mix inthe ingredients at left.
Remove the bacon and slice it. Turn the beans, etc., into a large wide dish, put the slices of bacon on top and finish cooking in the oven without a lid. Beans and bacon will develop a rich brown glaze, almost a crust. [Good Things]
The Virginia Housewife, written by Mary Randolph and published in 1825, was the first regional American cookery book. It contains many standard European recipes of course, but there are plenty of ways of dealing with the vegetables characteristic of Virginian gardens such as Monticello. Jefferson was unusual for his time in preferring vegetable dishes to the high protein diet that most people enjoyed (he felt that too much ‘animal food’ is what makes the English character so gross, rendering it ‘insusceptible of civilisation’). He described himself as eating little meat, ‘and that not as an aliment so much as a condiment for the vegetables which constitute my principal diet’.
Here are three of Mrs Randolph’s recipes, all simple to follow, in her own words:
‘To Make Ochra Soup
Get two double handfuls of young ochra, wash and slice it thin, add two onions chopped fine, put it into a gallon [4 litres – the American pint being closer the half-litre than to the Imperial pint] of water at a very early hour in an earthen pipkin, or very nice iron pot. It must be kept steadily simmering but not boiling: put in pepper and salt.
At twelve o’clock, put in a handful of lima beans: at half passed one o’clock, add three cimlins [custard marrows] cleaned and cut into small pieces, a fowl, or knuckle of veal, a bit of bacon or pork that has been boiled and six tomatoes, with skin taken off. When nearly done, thicken with a spoonful of butter, mixed with one of flour. Have rice boiled to eat with it.’
Note: okra came from Africa with the slaves, but was soon valued by their masters as well for its flavour, and for the sticky juice which gives a jellied smoothness to sauces, stews and soups. It can also be cooked with onion and tomato: leave it whole, just removing the hard outer skin from the cone at the stalk end – do not pierce through, as the juices should stay in when okra is to be served as a vegetable on its own.
‘To Cook Squash or Cimlin
Gather young squashes, peel and cut them in two. Take out the seeds, and boil them till tender. Put them into a colander, drain off the water, and rub them with a wooden spoon through the colander. Then put them into a stew pan, with a cup full of cream, a small piece of butter, some pepper and salt – stew them stirring very frequently until dry. This is the most delicate way of preparing squashes.’
Note: a recipe that can be used for every kind of squash, although it is at its best with custard marrow (cimlin). Pumpkin, cucumber, courgettes, chayote all do well, though with the more watery kinds, it is essential first to drain the purée, and then to dry it out over a moderate heat, before adding cream etc.
‘To Scallop Tomatoes
Peel the skin from very large, full ripe tomatoes – put a layer in the bottom of a deep dish, cover it well with bread grated fine; sprinkle on pepper and salt, and lay some bits of butter over them – put another layer of each, till the dish is full – let the top be covered with crumbs and butter – bake it a nice brown.’
Note: tomatoes were treated with caution by the English and northern French until modern times, but Jefferson loved them. One variety he grew, Spanish tomatoes, were especially fine and large – what the trade nowadays calls ‘beefy’. Marmande and Eshkol are similar in style, firm flesh, no wateriness, and ideal for cooking as for salad. Avoid sloshy tomatoes from the supermarket; not only do they have no flavour, but they will ruin this dish with their moisture. [Food with the Famous]
Lady’s fingers is our English name for the soft tapering pods known as okra elsewhere. It reminds me of a description I once read by a French traveller of Créole ladies in the Antilles eating with their fingers. They picked up their food with such lazy but skilful grace that not a drop fell on to their pale dresses. Their white hands remained clean.
In fact the name is shortened from Our Lady’s fingers, by analogy with Lady’s mantle or Lady’s bedstraw, an image of a grander, less indolent softness. The general idea, though, is worth remembering as a market guide, since the pods should be young and tender. Once the angle lines are brown and dark patches appear, they are not worth buying. They will cook to a kind of stringiness that winds round your teeth and sticks in the throat.
Practicality apart, I go for the name of okra because it reminds me of the plant’s native land. And of its history, which is not soft or pretty at all. Okra comes from nkurama, its name in the Twi language of the Gold Coast. Slaves took okra with them to the Caribbean and the southern states of America. The name that sticks there is another African word, gumbo, of Angolan origin. And gumbo is the name given to American dishes in which it appears, even in small quantities, because the pods contain a clear gummy liquid which smooths the sauce. It thickens it too in a jellied way which makes you lick your lips. So you may get shrimp gumbo or chicken gumbo, stews and soups which have this characteristic texture, even though the sliced green pods have disappeared from view into the general mélange.
To prepare
Nip off any stalks. Trim round the tiny cone at the stalk end to pare off the hardness. Be careful not to pierce this cone if you intend to keep the okra whole, seeds and juice inside. Should there be dark lines down the angle of the okra, slice them carefully away using a potato peeler for a shallow, even cut. [Exotic Fruits and Vegetables]
In Mexican markets I was puzzled by stall after stall of vast objects, an orange-toned green, varying greatly in size. Some of them looked as if they might weigh 5 kg (10 lb) or even more. When I asked about them, I was told they were pawpaws, and that pawpaws (often called papaya) do vary enormously, except for one or two varieties bred especially for commercial orchards – the solo from Hawaii and the papino from South Africa being the best-known examples. As their names suggest the fruit are small enough for one person to manage: they are the kind we see in our greengrocers and supermarkets.
The pawpaw is a giant plant rather than a tree. Its juicy green stem grows straight and tall, with a plume of leaves branching out from the top. When the fruit is formed it grows close under the leaves down the stem in a great cluster, the whole thing looking like an exotic Brussels sprout. James Grainger described it well in his poem on Sugar Cane (1764), writing of the ‘quick pawpaw, whose top is necklaced round/With numerous rows of parti-coloured fruit’. The name pawpaw and its various pronunciations and spellings derive from the Carib word ababai: one gets more than a hint of this in the babaco fruit that are sometimes on sale in London – these are mountain pawpaws, and the fruit has to be cooked before you eat it.
The fruit makes a perfect breakfast in the tropics: you will be presented with beautifully cut apricot-pink slices and a wedge or two of lime – lime being the essential partner, as it is of a number of other mild-tasting tropical fruits.
Pawpaws can be used when green in soups, stews, chutneys and jams, when they begin to turn yellow (this is the stage when they are transported, since the skin becomes more tender as the fruit ripens and extra susceptible to damage) and when they are ripe. In general treat green pawpaws like squashes and marrows, and the pink-fleshed fruit like melon – with ginger, for instance, pepper, or in slices with thin slices of Parma, Westphalian, Bayonne or country hams, or with lettuce and in salads to go with smoked chicken or cooked ham or salted duck. Ripe pawpaw halves can be scooped out a little, filled with spicy beef and rice mixtures (include the flesh you remove, chopped) and baked in the oven; the cool, tempered sweetness sets off well the heat and zip of such dishes.
To prepare
Halve the fruit and you will see that the cavity is full of deep grey seeds, the size of best caviare. They have a distinctive mustard taste, a greenish taste, and are not eaten. Scrape them out, then sprinkle the flesh with lime or lemon juice, if you are going to dig in with a spoon. Or slice and peel and season with lime juice, if this is appropriate, and a little sugar. [Exotic Fruits and Vegetables]
250 g (½ lb) potatoes, scrubbed
30–60 g (1–2 oz) butter
salt, pepper
about 60 g (2 oz) plain flour
It is important to use freshly cooked potatoes if you want potato cakes to taste as they should. I was delighted and surprised to come across a version of our familiar potato scones and cakes, in a pastrycook’s shop in Orléans, and even more delighted to find the recipe, which is very close to ours.
Whatever kind of potato cake you want to end up with, you start with a basic mixture:
Boil, peel and sieve the potatoes. Mix in the butter while they are still warm, then season well. Gradually add the flour until you have a firm dough that you can roll out – the best way of doing this is to mix everything together with your hands.
Thin Potato Cakes
Roll out the dough into a circle about ½ cm (¼ inch) thick or a little more. Cut it across into triangles and prick them with a fork. Cook them on a greased griddle or frying pan or hot plate, turning them so that they brown on both sides. Eat with butter, while they are still hot.
Thick Potato Cakes
Shape the dough into a roll about 4 cm (1½ inches) in diameter. Cut it into slices a good 1 cm (½ inch) thick. Cook as above, only rather more slowly. Good with bacon and egg. [Vegetable Book]
Parsnips need richness, as I have said; this need not come only from butter and cream, but from dripping or from the neutral agency of a deep-frying oil.
Variations
SARATOGA CHIPS: cut the parsnips into wedges downwards. Remove any woody core. Parboil them until they are almost tender. Drain them, then deep-fry them until golden-brown.
Peel, and slice the parsnips. Cut out the core when necessary, to turn the slices into rings. Parboil them until almost tender and drain. Dip them in egg, roll them in breadcrumbs and fry them in clarified butter until golden.
Boil, peel and sieve 1 kg (2 lb) parsnips. Mix with 2 large eggs, 1 tablespoon of flour, 100 g (3½ oz) melted butter, 125 g (4 oz) chopped walnuts and enough milk to make a soft but coherent mixture. Deep-fry tablespoons of the mixture. Serve with fish, or on their own.
Peel and cut parsnips into pieces a good 1 cm (½ inch) thick. Boil for 5 minutes, drain well. Bake them in a tine of dripping – along with potatoes, if you like – on a top shelf in the oven when you are roasting beef. Or put them round the beef to cook more slowly in the juices. [Vegetable Book]
125 (4 oz) lightly salted butter, softened
90 g (3 oz) caster or soft pale brown sugar
125 g (4 oz) self-raising flour sifted with 1 level teaspoon baking powder
2 eggs
2 tablespoons syrup from the ginger jar
3 knobs of stem ginger, drained and chopped
125 g (¼ lb) carrots, coarsely grated or shredded
2 level tablespoons ground almonds
Preheat the oven to gas 4, 180°C (350°F). This cake can be made by the all-in-one method: whizz the butter, sugar, flour, baking powder, eggs and syrup together in a food processor, or with an electric beater. Alternately beat them to a smooth mixture with a wooden spoon.
Mix the ginger, carrots and almonds and add to the cake dough.
Line a 20–23-cm (8–9-inch) long loaf tin with Bakewell paper and add the dough. Smooth the top, hollowing it down in the centre with the back of a spoon. Bake for 55 minutes.
You can ice the cake using icing sugar mixed with ginger syrup, serve it as a teabread in buttered slices or blend cream cheese with half its weight in butter, sweeten slightly, and leave people to help themselves. [À La Carte]
125 g (4 oz) softened butter
150 g (5 oz) light brown sugar
3 large egg yolks
250 ml (8 fl oz) whipping cream
1 level teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon allspice nutmeg finely grated
6–8 stoned, chopped dates
100 g (3½ oz) raisins
60 g (2 oz) roughly broken pecans, or walnuts
Jefferson Davis was head of the Confederacy of the Southern States of America, until defeat in 1865 by the North at the end of the Civil War. It seems inappropriate that anyone who shared in that experience of carnage should have a sweet frothytopped tart named after him – Pavlova cake, yes, but gâteau Pétain, Montgomery sponge, Rommelstrudel, Haig fairy cakes? I think not.
Like a number of other English dishes, transparent pie or tart has survived in America when it has disappeared here. The holding mixture of eggs, butter and sugar – in other words, a custard with melted butter taking the place of cream or milk – sets to a semitransparent firmness. Flavouring items differentiate one version from another. Two favourites here were sweetmeat pudding and Duke of Cambridge pudding and I reckon they are due for revival. In the States, especially in the South, chess tarts, Kentucky pie, pecan or black walnut pie and this date and nut tart are still very much alive.
For me, the tart is improved by using all dates, rather than half dates, half raisins, and I halve the quantity of sugar to the amount listed here (it is still very sweet). A good pudding for a family lunch party.
For a 23-cm (9-inch) tart tin, lined with plain shortcrust pastry, mix together the ingredients in the order given.
Bake at gas 6, 200°C (400°F) for 10–15 minutes, then down to gas 3, 160°C (325°F) for a further 20 minutes.
Top with 3 large egg whites, whisked and sweetened with 125 g (4 oz) caster sugar, to make a meringue. Put back into the oven until nicely browned.
Note: Kentucky pie has no nuts or spices; chess tarts are made small with raisins and nuts, no dates or spices. [Fruit Book]
On the low coral islands – the keys – of Florida, semi-wild limes grow on thick and thorny trees. Nobody bothers with them much by way of cultivation, and the fruit remains small and very acid. This key lime pie is a local speciality, made in many versions with condensed milk and lime juice. Not as revolting as it sounds. By adding eggs, you can head off the sweet-sharp excesses of the partnership. The second version comes from Even Jones’s American Food. ‘It uses neither evaporated milk nor the gelatin common to most Florida lime pies: it is as fresh as any fruit ice cream.’
Variations
For a 23-cm (9-inch) shortcrust pastry case, baked blind, beat – electrically if possible – 5 egg yolks until they are thick. Slowly add a 400 g (14 oz) can of sweetened condensed milk, then the grated peel of 3 limes and 150 ml (¼ pt) lime juice. Beat 3 of the whites separately to soft peaks, then fold into the yolk mixture. Bake at gas 3, 160°C (325°F) until the filling is firm, 15–25 minutes. Serve cool, or chilled, with whipped cream.
Line a 23-cm (9-inch) tart tin or pie plate with Graham cracker (digestive biscuit) crust. Bake 10 minutes at gas 4, 180°C (350°F). Cool.
Beat (electrically, if possible) 5 egg yolks over simmering water until very thick. Gradually beat in 125 g (4 oz) caster sugar, and go on beating until the mixture is pale and falling off the beater in threads. Remove basin from heat. Add 2 teaspoons grated lime zest and 150 ml (¼ pt) lime juice. Whisk 4 egg whites and a pinch of salt until thick and soft, add 60 g (2 oz) sugar gradually, beating all the time. Fold a third into the lime custard, then the rest. Pile into the crust and bake for 15 minutes at gas 4, 180°C (350°F). Cool, then chill and freeze. Take from the freezer 10 minutes before required. Top with whipped cream and thin slices of lime, or fresh strawberries dipped in caster sugar. [Fruit Book]
300 ml (½ pt) sieved canned peaches
300 ml (½ pt) orange juice
125 g (4 oz) sugar
1 dessertspoon lemon juice
Don’t despise this American recipe because the fruit is canned – the combination of flavours is most successful. Use white peaches if you can, they are more finely piquant than the yellow ones.
Mix together until the sugar is dissolved. Freeze to a granita, stirring every 30 minutes. Fresh strawberry pulp, or canned apricot pulp may be substituted for peaches – they all combine well with orange juice. [Good Things]
