ANYTHING JANE GRIGSON PUBLISHED was compulsive reading, the sort of prose that is enough on its own to create the faithful newspaper subscriber, no matter what might be thought of the rest of that week’s edition, or to stimulate the special journey to the bookshop in the first week of publication. The reason for her great popularity and for the affection in which all her readers held her must lie in the fact that she never forgot, and her writing never concealed, her joy in friendship and companionship and the pleasures of the table that contribute to their enjoyment.
So when an occasion came round for a celebration, it was seized on; it did not always have to revolve around a formal holiday such as Christmas. There could be much more personal and incidental reasons for spontaneous rejoicing.
The upbringing that helped make Jane ever conscious of the need for value and for the economical use of ingredients did not in any way diminish her delight in the best, not to say the luxurious. The treats, Lucullan recipes and dishes for special occasions in this chapter round off the picture of someone whose actively enquiring mind and catholic tastes have their memorial in her marvellous range of articles and books.
Caviare is a grand and painful subject. It is one of the most delicious, most simple things to eat in the world (and one of the most nutritious, too, but that’s an academic point). It is also one of the most expensive. It has an air of mythical luxury – mythical to our modern experience at any rate. The food of Czars, of those incredible tyrants who cherished fine fat fleas and Fabergé knick-knacks, while most of their subjects lived in a poverty of indescribable squalor. The mainstay, along with champagne and oysters, of La Belle Époque. Odd that the caviare trade should never have been so efficiently organized as now, under the Soviets and their pupils in the business, the Iranians.
Another odd thing: caviare isn’t a Russian word at all (it’s called ikra in the USSR). It seems to be a word of Turkish-Italian origin, derived perhaps from the port of Kaffa, on the south-east coast of the Crimea, which had been important even in classical times. Under the Genoese, from the mid-thirteenth century, to the mid-fifteenth century when it fell to the Turks, Kaffa was a vast international port, a depot on the trade route to China.
The origins of caviare must be as difficult to trace as the word itself. Aristotle remarked that the sturgeon was prized for its caviare. The Chinese had developed methods of treating and trading in caviare as early as the tenth century A.D. Probably earlier, as they had long used refrigeration to protect delicate foods on journeys across China to the Emperor’s court. Edward H. Schafer, Professor of Chinese* at Berkeley University, California, sent me this reference from the T’ai pin huan yü chi, a tenth-century official gazetteer, which says: ’ … at Pa-ling, where the Yangtze river flows out from Lake Tungt’ing, an area also noted for its tea, the natives catch sturgeon, simmer the roe in an infusion of Gleditschia sinensis seeds (an acacia-like plant, normally used as a black dye), then pickle it in brine … extremely delicious!’ It sounds like an early form of pasteurization.
I think, though, that one has to look much further back for the origins of caviare. Consider the reality, the basic nature of the product – really no more than the salted hard roe of a sturgeon. Once man came to the skill of being able to trap and catch fish, and to organize a supply of salt, he could not avoid the experience of caviare. Imagine him, squatting over a sturgeon by the mouth of some great grey river on the Baltic or North Sea, slitting up the belly and diving into the incredible mass of eggs – up to 20 per cent of the total weight – with a handful of salt. I’m sure he reflected gratefully that this part at least he could not smoke or dry for winter stores: it must have been a bonus in the hard realities of mesolithic survival. A crude affair by comparison with the finest malossol Beluga perhaps but still caviare.
Caviare today is a pampered product compared with those mesolithic feasts. It has to be, because of the problem of conveying a food, which should be eaten immediately, to the far-off societies that can afford it. We’ve killed our own sturgeon population, and have to look to the Caspian Sea, the only place where these vast creatures survive in any quantity. Even there they are in danger from Russian oil drilling, from hydro-electric stations and from the sinking level of the sea itself. There’s also the problem of human greed, politely described as ‘over-fishing’. Now, the Caspian sturgeon seek the southern rivers of the sea, the ones flowing down to the Iranian coast, for their spawning. The Iranians produce 210 tons of caviare a year, in consequence, which is not so far behind the Russians with 320 tons. They have learned everything they can, from Soviet technicians, about processing caviare, and about farming the fish, and with state control produce caviare of the highest standard. (The Rumanians produce tiny amounts – comparatively speaking – from Black Sea sturgeon; so do the Turks.)
The three main kinds of caviare are called after the species of sturgeon which provide them. The largest-grained and therefore most expensive (the price is based on appearance and not flavour) is taken from the Beluga, Huso huso, a giant sturgeon 4 metres (12 feet) long which can live to a 100 years, and which reaches maturity at the same age as a human being. It may – with luck – contain 59 kg (130 lb) of eggs, from deep grey to a soft moon-white. Next largest are the eggs of the Osetr, Acipenser gueldenstaedtii; they are sometimes golden-brown, sometimes greenish, or grey, and are first in flavour with people who know about caviare. The smallest-grained, and therefore the cheapest, comes from the Sevruga, Acipenser stellatus: it’s the one most widely on sale, and the most reliably steady in flavour.
With these three divisions, caviare is graded. The finest is malossol, which means slightly salted. Any of the caviares are best eaten fresh, which is only possible in the largest towns: for the provinces, where trade is not brisk and conditions of storage less ideal, it must be pasteurized. The difference in quality is comparable with the difference between fresh and potted foie gras – or between fresh and pasteurized milk and cheese. To me pasteurization spoils the pleasure of eating these foods, because the elusive, vital flavour has been killed.
Caviare is exported fresh in 2-kg (4-lb) tins, which have been piled up with salted eggs. Sliding lids are placed on top, then gently pressed down at intervals so that all surplus brine is excluded. A rubber band is stretched round to make an air-tight seal. The tins travel in ice in refrigerated containers, to keep the caviare at the correct temperature of – 1°C (30°F); one pamphlet observes that it is fatal to put caviare in the deep-freeze: ‘it is reduced straightaway to a somewhat expensive soup!’ An importer – such as W. G. White Ltd. on Churchfield Road in Acton – will re-pack it, sending fresh caviare twice a week to London’s best hotels and grocers, and putting smaller amounts of pasteurized caviare into little pots, for distribution to delicatessen stores all over the country.
At their offices I was shown the most beautiful of gastronomic spectacles: a tray with three of these tins on it, opened, with a little bowl of Osetr caviare, and a pot of salmon caviare, often known by its Russian name of keta. The Beluga in one tin was silky in texture, and lightly delicious. The Sevruga in another tin had a more pronounced and sea-like flavour. The Osetr in the bowl had been pasteurized, so it was difficult to judge if it really was the finest of all: again, the taste was different. The salmon eggs were enormous, and a translucent vermilion. They were certainly the visual stars of the tray by comparison with the Quaker-greys and sombre greens of the caviare, but after the others they tasted bitter. The third tin contained a tacky seaweed-coloured substance, in which the form of the eggs could hardly be seen. This was pressed caviare, made from the damaged eggs of the various species of sturgeon, salted and impacted together. I liked the taste very much, and the slightly toffee-ish substance. Considering that the price is less than half the Sevruga, I recommend it as an ideal candidate for a first sampling of caviare. Everyone needs a celebration occasionally and I think it’s worth saving up for caviare: the pressed kind is a possible extravagance for people whose incomes do not quite come up to their appreciation of food. Which, I think, means most of us.
Red caviare is so different. It’s delicious enough, like a superior smoked cod’s roe, but it’s not in the same class as caviare proper. Neither is lumpfish caviare from Iceland or Denmark, which is dyed black like those tenth-century roes from the sturgeon of Lake Tung-t’ing (though not with Gleditschia sinensis seeds). They are not to be despised, but keep them for lesser occasions.
To serve caviare
First of all, the amount – allow 30 g (1 oz) per person as a decent minimum, 45 g (1½ oz) is luxurious. Keep the pot in the refrigerator until required, then place it on a dish and surround with ice. As nothing should impair the delicate flavour of this greatest of all luxuries, avoid wine and vodka. And do not be tempted to mix in some cream cheese to make it go further. All that is required is toast, or water biscuits, or rye bread, or – best of all – the buckwheat bliny on page 290.
So much for the finest quality. With lesser grades or pressed caviare, you could add unsalted butter for the toast or rye bread, or melted butter for bliny. Perhaps some sour cream as well, or lemon juice. Pressed caviare is delicious spread on small split potatoes, baked in their jackets and not larger than duck’s eggs (unless you can afford a great deal of caviare).
When it comes to the ‘caviare’ of other fish, chopped spring onions, hard-boiled eggs, or cream cheese which has not been too processed, can all be added to make a large hors d’oeuvre. And when it’s a question of following a recipe for home-made ‘caviare’, you can experiment as much as you like. Personally I like it quite on its own, too. It’s very good, but I won’t pretend that it compares with the finest Russian and Iranian product, which has transformed the slightly porridgey quality of hard roe into a most poetic texture. [Fish Cookery]
12 baked vol-au-vent cases, or 1 large puff pastry case baked blind
300 g (10 oz) diced, prepared sweetbreads, or mixed sweetbreads and chicken
30 g (1 oz) butter
1 heaped tablespoon flour
300 ml (½ pt) sweetbread cooking liquor, hot
150 ml (¼ pt) hot milk
175 g (6 oz) mushrooms, sliced thinly
150 ml (¼ pt) double cream
salt, pepper, lemon juice
If you have to stretch a few sweetbreads (or use some left over from another meal), make these bouchées à la reine, which have no hint of frugality about them. Cold chicken is the meat often used, but I’ve noticed that sweetbreads are usually included. Sometimes they’re the only meat used. These bouchées, these queenly mouthfuls, were named for Marie Leszczinska, gourmet daughter of Stanislaus Leszczinsky, King of Poland, and wife of Louis XV of France.
Should you feel disinclined to make puff pastry, bake shortcrust tartlets instead, or one large pastry case. Alternatively 5 cm (2 inch) thick slices of bread can be deep-fried (cut the crusts off, and hollow out the middle part to contain the sweetbreads first). The filling can be put into scallop shells or small pots, covered with buttered crumbs and set in a hot oven, or under the grill, until browned and bubbling. None of these will be bouchées à la reine, but they’ll be appetizing all the same.
Melt butter, stir in flour and cook for 2 minutes. Gradually incorporate sweetbread liquor and milk. Simmer this sauce until it’s reduced to a thick consistency. Add the mushrooms, and cook for another 10 minutes, then add the cream. Simmer again until the sauce is thick without being gluey. Season well with salt, pepper and lemon juice. Reheat the sweetbreads, or sweetbreads and chicken, in the sauce carefully so that they don’t disintegrate. Be sure to bring it to the boil, then simmer for 5 minutes.
Meanwhile, put the vol-au-vent cases into the oven to heat up. Arrange them on a serving dish and pour in the filling. Replace the lids and serve immediately. [Good Things]
4–5 slices Chinese cabbage
1 ripe avocado
½ a lemon
2 Chinese gooseberries (kiwi)
1 dessertspoon cider vinegar
4 dessertspoons hazelnut or sunflower oil
salt, pepper
60 g (2 oz) toasted hazelnuts or almonds
4–5 lychees
1 purple Italian onion or sweet Spanish onion
I make this salad after Christmas to go with cold ham, turkey and spiced beef. It was first made in desperation when the salad greenery had been finished and the shops were still closed. Now it is part of the festival for us.
Cut the cabbage about ½ cm (¼ inch) thick across the wide end. Rinse, drain and dry in a cloth. Put in the bottom of a salad bowl or deep dish.
Not too long before the meal, peel, stone and cube the avocado. Squeeze the lemon over it to prevent discoloration, then arrange in the centre of the cabbage. Peel and slice the Chinese gooseberries, putting the slices round the avocado. Pour on the vinegar and oil. Scatter lightly with salt, more generously with black pepper. Put on the nuts, then peel and cut up the lychees discarding the stones and arrange them on top. Finally cut a few very thin onion rings and put them between the lychees. Be careful not to overdo the onion.
Serve cool rather than chilled. [Fruit Book]
2 lobsters
1–2 dozen oysters
12 tablespoons breadcrumbs
milk
8 tinned anchovy fillets
125 g (4 oz) butter
mustard powder, cayenne pepper, salt
This grand recipe has been sent to me from Italy. At least I think it’s grand, but I’ve a suspicion Lucullus would have thought it sadly simple. This Roman gourmet had a series of dining rooms, of increasing splendour. If he ordered dinner for ten friends in, say, the blue room, his slaves knew without further instruction that the meal was to cost £100. Other rooms meant far more. One day Lucullus was, exceptionally, dining at home without guests. The slave asked which room he would like the meal to be served in, expecting a £10 answer. Lucullus named the most expensive room of all.
After that, it may come as a surprise to you that the only ingredients in this recipe are as stated.
Split the boiled lobsters in half down the middle. Now ease the flesh, without removing it from the shell, as if you were cutting a grapefruit. (If the lobsters are alive, split them down the middle, dot them with butter and bake in a hot oven, gas 6, 200°C [400°F].)
Arrange the raw oysters, removed from their shells, along the cut sides of the lobsters; pour in the oyster juice. Moisten the breadcrumbs slightly with a little milk, squeezing out the surplus. Chop the anchovy fillets finely, mix into the bread and put this mixture over the oysters. Melt the butter, season it with mustard, cayenne pepper and salt. Brush this evenly over the breadcrumbs. Heat for 10 minutes under the grill, or in a very hot oven, to brown the crumbs and heat the lobster.
Note: I suspect this recipe was intended for crawfish, which lack the large claws of the lobster. For this reason, I usually remove all the lobster meat from claws and body and throw away the inedible bits. This leaves room in the shells for all or most of the lobster meat; if there is too much keep it for another dish. [Good Things]
500 g (1 lb) plain flour
250 g (8 oz) unsalted butter, chilled
90 g (3 oz) lard, chilled
1 teaspoon sea salt
iced water
750 g–1 kg (1½–2 lb) smoked haddock
½ litre (¾ pt) milk
150 ml (¼ pt) water
125 g (4 oz) long-grain rice or kasha
300 ml (½ pt) chicken stock
250 g (½ lb) mushrooms, sliced
125 g (4 oz) butter
lemon juice, salt, pepper
250 g (½ lb) onion, chopped
3 teaspoons dried dill, or 2 teaspoons curry powder
3 large hard-boiled eggs, chopped
1 egg yolk
1 tablespoon cream
125 ml (4 fl oz) soured cream
250 g (8 oz) butter
lemon juice
This recipe, based on the Russian kulebiaka, makes a fine main course for a luncheon party. It’s a rich, magnificent affair, so the rest of the meal should be light.
Pastry: Put flour in a bowl, cut butter in small pieces, and put with lard into the flour. Add salt. Rub to a crumbly mixture, then bind with iced water. Divide in two, one part a little larger than the other, and refrigerate for at least 2 hours. Meanwhile prepare the filling.
Filling: Cut haddock into several large pieces, and place in a saucepan. Bring milk and water to the boil, and pour over the fish. Stand it over a very low heat for 10 minutes: the liquid should not even simmer, just keep very hot. Remove skin and bone from drained, cooked fish and separate into large flakes (use cooking liquid for making a fish soup).
Cook rice or kasha (i.e. buckwheat, obtainable from health food shops – this is the correct cereal for kulebiaka, but I find the flavour a little strong and prefer rice) in the chicken stock and drain it.
Fry mushrooms in 30 g (1 oz) of the butter. Season with lemon juice, salt and pepper. In a separate pan, cook onion until tender in 60 g (2 oz) of butter: keep the lid on the pan, and the heat low, so that the onion does not brown. Season.
To assemble the pie, roll out the smaller piece of pastry to an oblong approximately 20 × 40 cm (8 × 16 inches). Place it on a baking sheet which has been buttered or lined with paper. Place half the rice on top, leaving a 2½-cm (1-inch) border free, and sprinkle half the dill or curry powder over it. Mix the glaze ingredients together and brush the free rim of pastry with it. On top of the rice put half the mushrooms, half the onions, half the hard-boiled eggs, and all the haddock. Then use up the remaining filling ingredients in reverse order, so that you finish with rice. Melt the remaining 30 g (1 oz) of butter and pour over.
Roll out the second sheet of pastry and drape it over the whole thing, pressing it down at the edges. Trim, then roll the edge into a piping effect, so that the whole kulebiaka looks like a pillow. Make a central hole, decorate top with leaves cut from the trimmings, and brush over to glaze with the egg yolk and cream. Bake 45 minutes, starting at gas 7, 220°C (425°F), then at gas 6, 200°C (400°F), as the pastry begins to brown.
Just before serving, bring sour cream to the boil and pour into the pie through a funnel placed in the central hole. Melt the butter, flavour it with lemon juice, and pour into a heated sauceboat. Have everything – serving dish, plates, and sauce – very hot.
Note: if you can lay your hand on some ceps, use them instead of mushrooms, allowing 375 g (¾ lb). The flavour will be even better.
SERVES 8–10
Substitute a generous pound of salmon for the smoked haddock in the preceding recipe. Slice it fairly thinly, and firm the slices in a little butter, but do not cook them right through.
Turbot (or sole) can also be used. The point is to have a fish of good texture and fine flavour. [The Mushroom Feast]
750 g (1½ lb) well-trimmed fillet steak
salt, freshly ground black pepper
125 g (4 oz) butter
2 tablespoons oil
500 g (1 lb) onions, sliced
500 g (1 lb) mushrooms, sliced
2½ teaspoons mustard powder
2 teaspoons sugar
600 ml (1 pt) soured cream
parsley, chopped
Originally the Stroganoffs were a family of tough and enterprising Russian merchants. After the conquest of Kazan in 1552, the Czar gave them huge grants of land in the Urals, which they colonized and exploited ruthlessly. Salt mines, iron and copper works, as well as the profits from trading and land, brought them riches and power until they became one of the great families of Imperial Russia. This recipe, from the end of the nineteenth century, was invented by the family’s French chef and named in their honour.
It’s a fine combination of French method and Russian ingredients. It also has the advantage of being quick and simple to prepare. Some versions of the dish, which has become so popular in Europe and America in the last few years, include tomato, and flour to thicken the sauce. I have even seen a suggestion that minced meat should be used. Such things are an insult.
Cut the meat into 6-mm (¼-inch) thick slices, then cut each slice into strips about 6 cm (2½ inches) long and 6 mm (¼ inch) wide. Season and set aside while the vegetables are cooked. Melt half the butter with the oil in a large frying pan, and cook the onions gently until they begin to soften without browning. Now raise the heat and add the mushrooms. By the time they are cooked without being too soft, the juices should have evaporated almost entirely, leaving the mixture moistened but not wet to the point of swilling. Keep mixture warm over a low heat. Mix the mustard and half the sugar to a paste with a very little hot water, and keep it by the stove. Now quickly fry the beef strips in another pan in the remaining butter (in two batches if necessary). They should brown in a few seconds, and not be allowed to overcook. Add them to the mushroom mixture, and stir in the mustard paste, then the sour cream. Correct the seasoning, and bring to just below boiling point. Turn into a dish and sprinkle with parsley.
The Russians serve kartoplia solimkoi with boeuf Stroganoff, in other words matchstick potatoes made in exactly the same way as chips – the only difference is that the potatoes are cut into thin pieces about 5 cm (2 inches) long and 3 mm (⅛ inch) wide and thick. Their crispness enhances the piquant creaminess of the beef in its mushroom and sour cream sauce. [Dishes of the Mediterranean]
1 large loin of lamb, about 1¼ kg (2½ lb) before boning
1 stick of celery, roughly chopped
1 carrot, sliced
1 onion, unpeeled and roughly chopped
30 g (1 oz) butter
1 small leek, trimmed and chopped
5 fresh figs, finely chopped
2½-cm (1-inch) length of fresh ginger, peeled and finely chopped
30 g (1 oz) brazil nuts, chopped
15 g (½ oz) breadcrumbs
1 tablespoon fresh chopped parsley
salt
freshly ground black pepper
370 g (13 oz) packet of puff pastry
beaten egg to glaze
1 tablespoon sesame seeds
90 ml (3 fl oz) ginger wine
90 ml (3 fl oz) double cream
2–3 fresh figs
Get your butcher to bone the lamb and ask for the bones. Preheat the oven at gas 7, 220°C (425°F) and brown the bones for 15 minutes. Place in a pan with the celery, carrot, onion and scant 1 litre (1½ pt) of water. Bring to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer for 2–3 hours, skimming off fat and scum when necessary. Strain, return to the saucepan and boil to reduce to 150 ml (¼ pt).
Melt the butter in a frying pan, add the leek. Fry for 5 minutes, then stir in the figs, ginger, brazil nuts, breadcrumbs, parsley and seasoning.
Place the lamb, skin side down, on a board. Spread the stuffing down the centre and roll up the meat, securing at 2½-cm (1-inch) intervals with string. Place in a roasting tin and cook at gas 7, 220°C (425°F) for 15 minutes. Drain off all but 1 tablespoon of the juices and set aside the roasting tin. Leave the meat to cool then remove the string.
Roll out the pastry thinly and brush the edges with beaten egg. Place the meat in the centre of the pastry and bring the pastry over the meat to enclose it completely, trimming off excess pastry at the ends. Transfer to a dampened baking tray with the join underneath.
Score a diamond pattern on the pastry, brush with beaten egg and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Cook for 15 minutes at gas 7, 220°C (425°F). Reduce the heat to gas 4, 180°C (350°F) and cook for a further 40 minutes for rare or 1 hour for medium, covering with foil if the pastry gets brown.
Towards the end of the cooking time, add the reduced stock, ginger wine and cream to the roasting juices in the tin and cook until the mixture thinly coats the back of a wooden spoon.
Slice the lamb and serve with a little of the sauce. Garnish each plate with half a fresh fig, cut in a fan shape. [À La Carte]
GAME FOR A CHANGE
Since the downfall of turkey into the freezing cabinet over the last couple of decades, many people have turned to alternatives at Christmas. Beef was the first obvious choice, a fine large piece of Aberdeen Angus that has been well hung being one of the best of life’s edible experiences. Then poultry farmers turned to geese and alternative breeds of turkey that were closer to pre-war or much earlier birds. This year the alternative seems to be game – and I suspect that this has something to do with the lively British Deer Farmers’ Association, as well as with the health lobby’s discovery that game meat, being lean, is better for us.
There are people who enjoy the clear, rich, clean flavours of game, who have been eating it for years whenever they could afford it and who are happy that it is now easier to come by. Its new virtuous status is a bonus.
There must be a certain unease about game farming. It is inevitable when one tastes what has been done to trout, chicken and turkey, and quite a lot of salmon. Let us hope that the Association, and any other game-farming bodies, will be organized tightly enough to keep out the cowboys so that the results of game farming will be properly fed, decently slaughtered and wisely hung. Inevitably the result of a tamer life will be a tamer flavour, which of course will suit some tastes, perhaps even the majority at first. Let us hope that the general desire for blandness will not drive out the true wild game flavour that for many of us is a passion.
If you are not in the habit of buying game, the first thing to do is to find a proper game dealer (who may well be the fishmonger rather than the butcher). Buy game from someone who knows its history, who has an interest in selling you the real thing. And if by some ill luck you choose a tough bird, or the game given you was inadequate don’t hesitate to go back. Make a polite but firm complaint, show willingness to try again.
Butchers are very much on the defensive these days – and so they should be. In this country we are badly served. Supermarkets have more than 50 per cent of the meat trade and vegetarians are increasing in number. No wonder when one sees the messy shops, tatty plastic trays, bloody overalls, badly hacked meat. Such reflections should give you the confidence to complain. Stand your ground. Cooking game is as simple as cooking any other form of meat. If you can manage that, you have no reason to let the butcher browbeat you by impugning your culinary skills in the matter of game. Per contra, when you are sold a particularly successful pheasant or haunch of venison, be ready with the compliments when you visit the shop next time.
The most obvious disadvantage of buying wild game is that some creatures survive more successfully in the wild than others. In the cossetted conditions of the deer or wild boar farm, they have an easier life and may often be in better shape (that, after all, is part of the point of domestication). Older and tougher game can be braised or stewed into wonderful dishes – all you need is full information on the right way to cook what you are buying. Prudence dictates, too, that you have a dummy run before Christmas lunch is upon you. You should also get your order in good time and choose a slack moment to discuss the matter with the supplier. Balance up beforehand whether you want to go for the clear intensity of wild game with its slight aura of risk, or the blander tranquillity of farmed deer or wild boar. I must add that my own experiences of farmed pheasant and partridge have not been happy; a Gressingham duck (a cross between mallard and a domestic breed) is a good half-way measure and more likely to appeal to a large family party than, say, mallard, teal or widgeon.
Books worth consulting: Classic Game Cookery by Julia Drysdale; Game for All by Nicola Fletcher; The Game Cookbook by Colin Brown. [Observer Magazine]
4 wood pigeons, trussed, seasoned
oil
600 ml (1 pt) game or chicken stock
1 glass red wine
1 good sprig of thyme 5 crushed juniper berries
2 teaspoons redcurrant jelly
about 2 teaspoons arrowroot
salt, pepper
250 g (8 oz) dark brown or green lentils, soaked 12 hours
60 g (2 oz) lard
1 carrot, ½ onion, ½ leek, all cut in small dice
½ large clove garlic, finely chopped
2 teaspoons granulated sugar
300 ml (½ pt) chicken stock
125 ml (4 fl oz) each double cream and milk
130 g (4½ oz) flour
2 eggs and 1 egg yolk
1 egg white, beaten until stiff
125 g (4 oz) wild rice, cooked
A winner of a dish from Mark Slater, who is the young chef at Cromlix House, Dunblane, north-west of Edinburgh. They specialize in game there and this lovely earthy and smooth combination of flavours sets off pretty well any type of game, whether feathered or furred, roasted or pan-cooked in the magret style (try it too with domesticated or Gressingham duck magrets). The operations are straightforward and the effect unpretentious.
Switch on oven to gas 6, 200°C (400°F), and preheat the grill.
Brown the pigeons on one side in a little oil for about 8 minutes, then turn them and cook the other side for 6–8 minutes. Cut off the breasts, which will be red on the inner side, and put them to one side. Chop the carcases and put with the stock, wine, thyme and juniper to simmer for 20 minutes, then increase the heat and reduce the liquid to about 300 ml (½ pt). Strain into a small saucepan, skim and stir in the redcurrant jelly over a low heat. Slake the arrowroot with a couple of tablespoons of cold water, and use it to thicken the sauce slightly. Season it with salt and pepper.
Meanwhile drain and cook the lentils for 3 minutes in boiling salted water. Tip them into a sieve, but do not refresh. Melt the lard in an ovenproof pot, stir in the diced vegetables and, when they are thoroughly coated, add the garlic, tomato, sugar and stock, then the lentils. Bring to the boil, then braise in the oven for 15–20 minutes. Taste for seasoning.
The batter for the pancakes can be made in the usual way and well in advance of the rest of the dish, but do not fold in the beaten egg white until just before cooking – which should be done immediately before serving. Brush four crumpet rings with butter inside and butter a non-stick pan. Put in the rings and heat up, then ladle a little batter into each ring. When the top begins to set and show bubbles, scatter a little wild rice on top. Range the pancakes on the rack of a grill pan. When everything else is ready and dished up, put the pancakes under the heated grill so that they puff up a little. Makes 12–16 pancakes.
While you make the pancakes, put the pigeon breasts into the oven in order to heat them through. They should be covered with a butter paper.
To serve: arrange the lentils on a hot serving dish, or on four warm plates. Slice the pigeon breasts into three pieces each, diagonally, and place them on the bed of lentils. Put the pancakes and any vegetables around the sides. Pour some of the sauce over the pigeon, and serve the rest separately. [Observer Magazine]
1½ kg (3 lb) stewing venison, diced and trimmed
375 ml (½ bottle)
red wine
1 medium onion, sliced
3 tablespoons brandy
3 tablespoons olive oil
salt, black pepper
250 g (½ lb) streaky bacon in a piece
60 g (2 oz) butter
2 large onions chopped
1 large carrot, diced
1 large clove garlic, crushed
2 tablespoons flour
beef or venison stock
bouquet garni
125 g (¼ lb) mushrooms, sliced
1 dessertspoon sugar
24 small onions (pickling size)
beef or venison stock
24 small mushrooms
8 slices of bread
chopped parsley
A dish for a banquet, or at least for a meal of celebration.
Mix the marinade ingredients together, seasoning them well, and soak the venison in it overnight. Next day, melt the butter (sauce ingredients) in a heavy pan, and brown the bacon in it, which you have first cut into strips about 2½ cm (1 inch) long and 6 mm (¼ inch) wide and thick. When the fat runs from the bacon, put onions and carrot and garlic into the pan to be browned lightly, then the well-drained venison. Stir the flour into the pan to take up the fat, and make a sauce by adding the strained marinade, plus enough stock to cover the ingredients (everything can be transferred to a deep casserole if this is more convenient). Add the bouquet and mushrooms, and simmer until the venison is cooked – about 1½ to 2 hours. Skim off any surplus fat. (The cooking up to this point may be done the day before the venison is to be eaten.)
Half an hour before the meal, prepare the garnish and reheat the civet if necessary. Melt 30 g (1 oz) of butter with the sugar in a heavy pan. Turn the small onions in this until they are well coated. Add just enough stock to cover them, and cook at a galloping boil. This will reduce the liquid to a spoonful or two of caramel. Be careful it doesn’t burn, and keep shaking the onions about in it so that they are nicely glazed. Cook the mushrooms whole in 30 g (1 oz) of butter, with salt and pepper. Cut the bread into triangles, and fry in the last 60 g (2 oz) of butter.
Arrange the civet on a large hot serving dish, removing the bouquet, and put the mushrooms and onions on top pushing them down a little so that they look naturally part of the dish (but not too far so that they disappear). The croûtons go round the edge. Sprinkle with parsley and serve very hot. [Good Things]
6 egg whites
a pinch of salt
6 egg yolks
125 g (4 oz) sugar
2 level tablespoons cocoa
45 g (1½ oz) flour
melted butter, for greasing
½ level tablespoons cocoa; pot apricot jam plus 1–2 tablespoons water
60 g (2 oz) dark or bitter chocolate, broken up
2 level tablespoons cocoa
100 g (3½ oz) sugar
4 tablespoons water
½ level teaspoon unsalted butter
2 level teaspoons powdered gelatine
2 tablespoons water
60 g (2 oz) dark or bitter chocolate, broken up
300 ml (½ pt) double cream
300 ml (½ pt) whipping cream
175 g (6 oz) vanilla sugar
2 baking trays, about 27 × 37 cm (10½ × 14½ inches)
In 1896 the young and far from innocent Princesse de Caraman Chimay ran off with a gypsy musician, Rigo Jancsi (meaning Johnny Blackbird), and set up house in Paris. No case of the raggle-taggle gypsies-O!, for the Princess Clara was the rich daughter of the richest, most illiterate landowner of north-west America (one paper described him as ‘the millionaire muskrat catcher’), and there is no record that her distinguished Belgian husband ran after her. With her full lips ‘like an open pomegranate’, her white plump skin and her restless eyes, she had the look of a saint. Gypsy Johnny was thirty-eight. When he drove beside her through the Bois de Boulogne, her hand on his knee, he grinned ‘till his strong white teeth showed under his moustache’, a twirled moustache. She posed for photographs with a bicycle, like a saucy baker’s boy – triangular hat pushed back, cigarette drooping from her mouth and a black velvet knickerbocker suit which showed off her legs in black silk stockings. Paris talked of little else – tut tut, my dear, did you ever? – and Toulouse Lautrec made a lithograph that exactly expressed the fair white princess ‘giving her favour and her purse to a little brown fiddler in the Hungarian band’.
The Hungarians were openly enchanted when their gypsy musician brought his princess home. Enterprising pastrycooks in Budapest made cakes in his honour. This one, with its pale plump filling, became a classic.
To make the cake, whisk egg whites with salt and 1 tablespoon water until very thick and firm. Beat in the egg yolks one by one, beating all the time (use an electric beater if possible). Then add the sugar, beating it in thoroughly. Sift together the cocoa and flour. Sprinkle it round the sides of the egg mixture and fold it in carefully. Set the oven at moderately hot, gas 5, 190°C (375°F).
Line the baking trays with non-stick baking paper. Brush it with melted butter. Spread the cake mixture evenly in the trays and bake in the heated oven for about 15 minutes or until cooked.
Invert each tray over a clean cloth. Leave for 5 minutes, then remove the trays and peel away the paper. Warm the apricot jam with the water and, when it boils and begins to disintegrate, sieve it: brush over one cake.
Next make the glaze by melting the chocolate in a basin over simmering water (or the top of a double boiler). Remove the basin (or pan) and cool until tepid. Mix cocoa and sugar to a paste with the water, and add with the butter to the chocolate. Put back over simmering water and stir for 5 minutes. Pour over the chocolate cake without the apricot jam on it. Leave to cool until the glaze is firm. Trim the cake with a heated knife blade, then cut it carefully into 5-cm (2-inch) squares, without cutting completely through.
Make the filling. Mix the gelatine with the water. Put the chocolate, creams and sugar in a basin over simmering water (or the top of a double boiler) and heat until thick. Stir in the gelatine and remove the basin (or pan) from the heat. When the cream is almost set but just pourable, whisk it with a rotary beater until it holds a firm shape and becomes pale in colour. Use an electric beater only if you are good at controlling it: but be careful or the chocolate cream will turn to butter. Should it do this, chill the chocolate cream, then soften, and whisk in 125 g (4 oz) of unsalted butter, adding the cream gradually.
Spread this chocolate cream filling over the apricot-glazed cake. Chill until just about firm – not hard – and then carefully place the chocolate-glazed squares on top. Leave overnight – chilling again – then cut down between squares to separate the pieces. [European Cookery]
600 g (1¼ lb) flour, sifted
1 packet Harvest Gold dried yeast
180 ml (6 fl oz) warm milk
¼ teaspoon salt
3 egg yolks
150 g (5 oz) sugar
3 cardamon seeds, crushed
150 g (5 oz) butter, softened
3 egg whites, stiffly whisked
75 g (2½ oz) raisins
25 g (scant 1 oz) each candied fruit and blanched almonds, chopped blanched almonds candied fruit and peel, chopped, or white glacé icing (optional)
This yeast cake is a little difficult to manage with the egg whites and peel and so on. I find it is best kept in a polythene bag between meals, or until you serve it, with paskha, so that it does not dry out too much.
This recipe is based on the one in Russian Cooking, published by Mir in Moscow, 1974, and translated by F. Siegel.
Kulich is baked in tall, round moulds, so the dough rises and puffs up to give a ‘chef’s hat’ effect. Use two large coffee tins if you do not have tall brioche moulds.
Mix 250 g (8 oz) of the flour with the yeast in a mixing bowl, then stir in the milk. Put the mixture into a polythene bag, put in a warm place and leave till spongy and doubled in size – about 1 hour.
Then mix in the salt, 2½ egg yolks (set aside about half a yolk for gilding the kulich afterwards), sugar, cardamon and butter. Then add the egg whites and 250 g (8 oz) more flour. The dough will be on the wet and sticky side. Add the rest of the flour gradually until you get a dough that leaves the sides of the bowl. If it is a little sticky, do not worry too much. Put in a warm place and leave to rise again – about 2–3 hours this time.
Knock down the dough and add the fruits and almonds. Divide between two buttered and floured moulds; the dough should come half or two-thirds of the way up. Leave to prove – about 1 hour.
Set the oven at moderate, gas 4, 180°C (350°F).
Bake the kulich in the preheated oven for about 45 minutes. Check after 35 minutes, by inserting a cocktail stick or thin skewer, which should come out clean.
When ready, turn out and brush with remaining egg yolk and decorate, if you like, with chopped fruit and nuts, or icing, pouring it on so that it dribbles down the sides. Stick a candle in the top of each one if it is Easter. [European Cookery]
This preserve which starts with strawberries is destined for Christmas and New Year parties. You need a 5-litre (9-pt) stoneware jar, or a special rumtopf from Austria or Germany which can sometimes be bought in this country.
Before you start, a word of warning. The method is easy, foolproof. The tricky part is the quality of the fruit. It must be of the finest, and preferably from a garden that you know has not been much subjected to sprays: in the opinion of one expert, whom I consulted after a batch had developed mould for no reason that I could see, it is difficult these days to make a rumtopf that you can rely on, and he is convinced that the reason is the chemical treatment that commercially grown fruit undergoes.
This poses a real dilemma with the required soft fruit. You can scrub an orange or an apple without harming it: a strawberry that becomes acquainted with water loses its virtue.
Another point to watch is the alcohol. Cheap rum and brandy sometimes means weaker rum and brandy.
If after these warnings, you decide to try your luck, this is what you do:
Prepare 1 kg (2 lb) of strawberries, removing their hulls. Sprinkle them with ½ kg (1 lb) sugar and leave overnight. Next day, tip the whole thing, juice included, into a well-washed and dried rumtopf. Pour on 1 litre (1¾ pt) of rum (as in Austria and Germany) or brandy (as in France).
Put a clean plate directly on the fruit to make sure it stays below the surface. Cover the jar with plastic film and the lid. Keep in a cool dark place.
Add more soft fruit and sugar – half quantities are fine – as the summer progresses. Add more alcohol, too, from time to time to keep the liquid level up. It should clear the fruit comfortably. Remove and replace the plate each time.
Suitable fruits include: sweet and sour cherries (including stones), raspberries, loganberries, boysenberries, mulberries, peaches, apricots, greengages, mirabelles (include an occasional stone), melon, pineapple (cubed), 1–2 apples and pears.
Although gooseberries, currants and blackberries can go in, they do tend to go hard and uncomfortable.
When the pot is just about full, top it up with a final dose of alcohol. Cover with fresh cling film, then the lid, and leave until Christmas, at least a month.
To use
Serve in wine glasses with cream floated on top.
Serve as a sauce with ice creams, vanilla or honey for instance.
Mix with champagne, mostly the liquid with not too much fruit, for a cocktail.
Make a triangular build-up of boudoir biscuits, dipped in black coffee, glued together and covered with whipped cream that includes sugar and finely ground coffee – but not too much – and serve the rumtopf as a sauce. [Fruit Book]
To make this in France, people go looking for deserted cottage gardens to find the oldfashioned guignes, the black and red cherries that we call geans. They make a superb liqueur, but the cherries are not much fun to eat. My grandmother, who was a great cherry brandy-maker, used Kentish Reds which are a Duke cherry; and her cherries were worth eating (except when they were twenty-five years old, by which time they were rather tasteless having given everything to the liqueur).
Whether in England or France or anywhere else, the method is the same. You fill a clean bottle or bottling jar almost to the top with cherries. Cut their stalks down to a tiny length first, then prick them several times with a darning needle and put them into the bottle as you go.
Pour in caster sugar to come about a third of the way up, then enough brandy to cover the fruit. Cork it up tightly, or close the bottling jar in the usual way.
Leave in a cool, dark place for as many years as you can bear to, or at least until Christmas. In time, the sugar dissolves. You can help it along by giving the bottle a gentle turn from time to time. Bottling jars can be turned upside down. [Fruit Book]
A CELEBRATION OF FRIENDSHIP
The Master of the Sunday Lunch died in 1988. Adey Horton had been much on my mind as I was preparing these articles. His life, at any rate his earlier life, was an improbable fiction, and it had an appropriate end. We had feared this winter for him, afraid he might collapse in the dark, on the gravel courtyard between the two caves where he lived. In fact he died quite suddenly at nine in the evening. Two friends were with him. This mysterious transplanted Englishman went sociably and in a more cheerful humour than one might imagine of a man with cancer of the mouth and throat.
He wrote to us about thirty years ago after reading a book of Geoffrey’s, The Painted Caves, describing the strange village of Trôo. He found us a cave to rent there one summer, then a tiny house to buy (we were decidedly entre deux vins after a cheerful lunch, but never regretted the expenditure of £468). We owe him twenty-four years of that particular happiness which comes from learning to live in another country than one’s own. Early on I asked him to write me a guide to charcuterie. Troubles prevented him. So I also have to thank him for a living (as I suppose my daughter Sophie does, too).
His humour was vast. He was a great story-teller, a devoted and assiduous, if occasionally exasperating friend, not gifted as a husband or father. His third wife once remarked with a wry smile, ‘Adey collects people’. That indeed was his great gift, showing most splendidly in the organizing of Sunday lunch, an event that occurred almost daily in the summer months of July and August when the whole of France seems to be on holiday.
He showed us what this particular event could be, stretching its possibilities to their limit. There were introductions, matchmaking, reconciliations, the persuasion of children into civilized behaviour (keeping glasses filled, cushions at elderly backs, sticks to hand). Conversation was uninhibited, with great sky castles of fanciful speculation. With his wild mixture of local friends and farmers, Parisians, English, Americans, Africans, Australians, scholars, musicians and gypsies, jokes and opinions flew across the trestle tables that were set up in the courtyard, or in a small patch of woodland that he owned. Chains of friendship began with Adey’s Sunday lunches.
The food was copious, contributory and mainly local. We grilled eels on a barbecue, or kebabs of miscellaneous pork. The meal began with the lavish charcuterie of the region. Salads followed the grill and cheese from the small farms of the Loir valley. To finish there was Pithiviers and fromage frais, or a splendid chocolate cake, peaches in wine, mirabelle and greengage tarts. Wine, marc and coffee – we never wanted it to end.
One day Geoffrey and I found a lost château in the Sarthe, at Sémur-en-Vallon. It had Rapunzel towers, green moat with sheep grazing, a ruined mill, the dusty romantic air of ‘Le Grand Meaulnes’. We took Adey to see this discovery. ‘When we win the pools,’ said Geoffrey, who never did the pools, ‘we’ll buy this place and you can have a wing there and live in state – on condition that you superintend lunch on Sundays. Just the setting for the Master of the Sunday Lunch.’
From another friend in the last two years I have learnt a more urban and practical style of Sunday lunch. Theatre of a different kind. The secret is a leisurely progression of small courses, only one of which entails cooking on the day itself. Here is a menu:
Vegetable soup, say watercress
Roasted peppers in olive oil, with anchovy, dried tomatoes and basil Duck stuffed with a guineafowl and wild rice, beans, potatoes
Green salad
Cheese, including a soft goat’s cheese and preserves
Little pots of chocolate with rosemary, or a fruit salad
By the time we get to the biscuits and dessert wine, then the coffee, several hours have passed. We have laughed and argued and at no stage eaten too much. We are not allowed to wash up. Sometimes our host must grit his teeth as he smiles goodbye at seven in the evening, but he does not admit to it.
This has been a popular first course in France for several years now. I suspect it started off with the Minchelli brothers on the Ile de Ré where they opened a fish restaurant in 1963. Their strong suit has always been freshness, and ever since they moved to Paris early in the Seventies the quality of the fish has been the basis of their reputation at Le Duc on the Boulevard Raspail.
The first time we ate fish tartare it came in tiny heaps on minute tartlets with the apéritifs (alternating with fried quail’s eggs, still warm, on toast stamped out neatly in circles). If you are not serving the almond tart later on, this is something to consider. Another way is to serve it in well-chilled heaps on salad leaves, with very hot, rough-cut toast.
Even if you go for this latter, more generous serving, you still should keep the quantity small as the effect is very satisfying. 375 g (12–13 oz) is quite enough for 6–8 people, assuming a soup first and a main course afterwards: by this I mean trimmed weight, ready to cut up. Chill it thoroughly in the freezer to firm it up but don’t let it freeze hard – this makes it easier to cut up.
Meanwhile make a mayonnaise in the usual way with a large egg yolk, 150 ml (¼ pt) light olive oil, lemon juice and pepper. To it add, according to your taste, chopped gherkin, small capers, a little anchovy fillet chopped, a splash of Tabasco and Worcester sauce.
Slice the fish ½ cm (generous ⅛ inch) thick. Then dice it. The effect should be of a coarse but well-disciplined chop. Mix in a little of the sauce tartare, say a generous teaspoon, then a second and a third. At this point you may well have added enough; the mixture should be lightly bound together with the sauce itself being obvious. Add appropriate fine chopped herbs. Chill until required, but do not keep it hanging around more than a couple of hours.
125 g (4 oz) butter
150 g (5 oz) flour
1 tablespoon sugar
3 or 4 drops each almond and vanilla extracts
150 g (5 oz) blanched slivered almonds
250 ml (8 fl oz) whipping cream
150 g (5 oz) sugar
a pinch of salt
1 tablespoon Grand Marnier
1 tablespoon Kirsch
2 drops almond extract
This tart is almost biscuit-like and goes well with fruit. For instance, peaches or nectarines poached in a light tea syrup, or, better still, Doyenné de Comice pears in a lemon and vanilla syrup, or a quince and vanilla syrup.
Make the pastry well in advance. Cut up butter, let it soften to room temperature before cutting it into the flour and sugar (use a pastry blender or 2 knives). When it is a coarse meal, add the extracts and 1 tablespoon of ice-cold water. Form into a dough, then wrap in plastic film and chill for 1 hour at least. Use to line a 23-cm (9-inch) tart tin with a removable base, pressing it into place – it is a very tender dough, which makes it tricky to roll. Keep back a little for subsequent patching, and press the pastry so that it rises above the rim of the tin. Prick lightly and chill again for up to 8 hours or freeze.
Bake this shell in an oven preheated to gas 6, 200°C (400°F) for about 10 or 15 minutes, until it begins to be firm and start browning. Remove and cool. Patch any holes with the dough you kept back.
For the filling, mix all the ingredients in a pan and stir over a low heat until the sugar has dissolved and the whole thing glistens – 10–15 minutes. Cool slightly and spread over the pastry.
To bake, line the floor of the oven with foil, set the heat to gas 4, 180°C (350°F). Give the tart 25–30 minutes in mid-oven. The filling may well bubble over, then it calms down and starts to caramelize. For an even colour, turn the tart regularly during the last 15 minutes of cooking time. When baked, remove and cool to room temperature before slicing. [Observer Magazine]
It might be sensible to give recipes for oxtail stew and vacuum-cooked rice pudding, since we are considering picnics in May, but decency compels a certain optimism on my part. That is the convention. It is indeed odd that a nation whose weather is so unpredictable should be such ardent and accomplished picnickers.
Some of my happiest moments in childhood were spent crouching in the lee of a northern stone wall, cooking spring nettles in an old toffee tin on a reluctant fire, rain crashing down with the warm insistence of Lake District weather. Even better were the days we huddled together for warmth in the great shadow of Pavy Ark by the tarn, teeth chattering their way through sandwiches of the wartime national loaf and Lancashire cheese. We picked our dessert of bilberries as we walked on up to the Langdale Pikes. My husband remembered picnics with his brothers on the top of church towers or the platform of old pollarded willows – they hauled up a primus for making tea, and ate gingerbread from the village shop.
Indeed, my husband was a Master of Picnics. He would drive on until teatime before he found a site worthy of the feast that he knew Sophie and I would have assembled. By the time he stopped the car, we would be more than crotchety. Then, seated 2 m (6 feet) up on top of a dolmen, or settled down into nests of thrift on a sea cliff, we had to confess he had been right. Once we even cooked our andouillettes by a railway track beside the canal at Saint Denis, north of Paris: the writhing sculptures of dying kings and queens in the cathedral afterwards were almost an anticlimax after the hoots of friendly laughter and the roars of ‘Bon appetit!’ Before country journeys, we would examine maps through a magnifying glass to discover fords, wonderful but sadly disappearing places.
Our last picnic, like so many earlier ones over the years, was to the high stony Causses near the gorges of the Tarn. We were in search of those flat rosette thistles that people thereabouts nail to their doors to tell the weather (they open to the sun, close to the rain). And we found them in abundance, enough for all our doors, close to a huge rocky chaos that from the distance looked like a town. We drove up steep roads and tracks:
Through dandelion grasses, then rippling of fords,
Climbing to a dry karst slowly; through butterflies, past
Debris of picnics, stones of the executed, and through junipers.
Geoffrey wandered off to discover flowers and pick my juniper berries, while I set up table and chairs, spread out the food in that brilliant light.
In a way, food doesn’t matter a damn, so long as it is of top quality, has an edge to it rather than sloppiness, and is accompanied by an element of liquidity. This can be plenty of fruit, plus fizzy and still water with home-made fruit syrups and cordials. For an evening picnic, a chilled – or boiling hot – soup is a good idea. And wine, especially champagne or white wine and soda water. Indeed, wine is what dramatizes the occasion for me; after those wartime childhood picnics which had to depend for their glamour entirely on the landscape, wine is essential, though being the driver as a rule these days, I drink very little of it. After wine and fruit, provide good bread. Then all you need is a lively spread, which need only be unsalted butter, coarse salt and celery or fennel. Cheese and a fine salami or ham on the bone are obvious embellishments, so is asparagus at this time of year with eggs mollets or Chinese tea eggs. Anything beyond that is a bonus, and certainly once the word picnic hovers in the air as the week ends, I do make one or more of the following dishes, and work out what we might be able to pick up along the way.
Always have a picnic kit ready, so that you can concentrate on food and drink once somebody says, ‘Let’s have a picnic today,’ viz:
cutlery, corkscrew and bottle opener in a zip pencil case
stainless steel beakers, or very firm plastic beakers
plastic plates on which you can rest paper plates (saves washing up and smells in the car)
a roll of plastic bags for rubbish, left-overs and booty (mushrooms, bilberries, blackberries, fossils)
moisturized squares, intended for wiping up babies
an attractive cloth to set the food on
matches, salt, sugar, peppermill, tea bags
insect spray and Moon Tiger coils (especially for evening picnics)
kitchen roll or tissues
Elastoplast and a cologne stick for infant hurts and fatigue
tiny folding picnic stove, slug pellets to burn and picnic pans
This all sounds cumbersome, but it packs up quite tidily.
Of course, if you go in for High Life picnicking, you will have a fitted basket of porcelain, silver and linen. And somebody, I hope, to carry it. One friend remembers picnics of this kind in the Highlands when she was a child in the Thirties. It was the chauffeur’s job – how appropriate – to warm up the soup over a stove. Her grandmother sat out of the drizzle under a large umbrella, while the children kept off the midges with oil of citronella and waving ferns.
500 g (1 lb) bread flour
1 packet (2 teaspoons) Harvest Gold or easy bake yeast
2 teaspoons fine salt
2 tablespoons olive or nut oil or melted butter
about 250 ml (8 fl oz) water at blood heat
either 2–3 cloves garlic, crushed, chopped
or ½ teaspoon each aniseed, coriander seed and peppercorns, well but coarsely ground
or 24 fine black or green olives, stoned, chopped
or 60 g (2 oz) chopped prosciutto crudo
or 1 medium chopped onion, sweated in oil until soft, and mixed with coarsely chopped walnuts
olive oil, coarse salt, thyme
This flat bread, in the style of focaccia, is particularly handy for picnics. Just slit it with a sharp knife and it is ready for people to make their own sandwiches. If the rest of the meal has a reasonably starchy element, there will be enough bread for 8.
Mix half the flour with the yeast and salt. Add the oil or butter and most of the water. Mix to a thick batter. Leave 20 minutes, until fermented and bubbling, then add the remaining flour to make a soft, almost tacky consistency. The dough should be extremely malleable, on the verge of sticking. With some flours, you may need the last of the water. Knead electrically or by hand. Pick up the dough in one hand, pour a little oil into the bowl with the other. Turn the dough in this so that the bowl is oiled as well. Stretch clingfilm across the top, or tie into a plastic bag, and leave in a warm place for 1½–2 hours.
Punch the dough down, mix in one of the flavourings, or none, and put back in the bowl. Cover as before and leave in the refrigerator overnight.
In the morning, brush out a baking tray 36 × 26 × 3 cm (14½ × 10½ × 1¼ inches) deep with olive oil. Pat out the dough to fit, or roll it and put it into the tin. Snip the top in decorative rows with the scissors. Scatter with coarse salt and thyme. Tie into a plastic bag, leave to prove for at least 40 minutes. Switch on the oven to gas 9–10, 250°C (500°F). Bake the bread for 20 minutes, turn it over and give it another five. Brush the top lightly with oil for the gloss, and leave to cool. Best eaten the same day.
250 g (8 oz) cooked long-grain rice
2 tins of tunny in oil, broken up with a fork
4 medium tomatoes, skinned, pipped, finely chopped
6 fillets of anchovy, chopped, or 30–50 g (1–2 oz) black olives, stoned, chopped
chopped parsley, chervil and tarragon to taste
One of the staple dishes of summer cookery in our Loir and Loire country in France. The food there is gentle and classic, the kind that makes one think of picnic lunches in the orchard. The proportions given by Boulestin are so close to ours that I am reminded that he came from Poitiers, in the southern part of our region. Of course they can be varied: according to taste, pocket and the rest of the meal, there will be more or less tunny and tomato to rice.
Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl. Dress with a vinaigrette consisting of two thirds olive oil and one third wine vinegar (rather more vinegar than normal), salt, pepper and a little Dijon mustard.
A fresh and delicately lively salad, a contrast to the strong and savoury pepper recipe on page 434. Particularly good with the duck legs (page 435), or with slices of ham on the bone. If you are also making the tunny salad, leave out the new potatoes.
Cook 375 g (¾ lb) new potatoes, the same weight of shelled peas and 175–250 g (6–8 oz) mange-tout or sugar snap (jacket) peas – keep the latter on the crisp side.
Meanwhile make a dressing of olive oil, wine vinegar, chopped mint, a pinch of sugar, pepper and salt. Cut up the potatoes and add them while still warm to the dressing, plus the warm peas, turning gently. Cool the mange-tout or sugar snap peas separately.
Line a bowl with salad leaves. Put in the potato and shelled pea salad, draining off any surplus dressing, and lay the mange-tout or sugar snap peas on top with chopped chives or spring onions. Crumbled crisp bacon is an alternative to the onion flavouring.
4 large peppers, halved, seeded
5–6 tins anchovy fillets milk
about 12 dried tomatoes, halved
olive oil, pepper
several good sprigs of basil
When he is fed up with novels, broadcasts, reviews, Paul Bailey has the endearing habit of making exotic preserves and lively dinners for his friends. He is incapable of walking past a market stall of plums or red peppers without stopping, it’s his secret vice, and like a punter he ends up with nothing as he gives it all away. This dish is a kind of preserve as it improves with being made in advance, and has an intense flavour. Indeed if you make it in a large enough quantity, it could provide a picnic in itself so long as you take bread – focaccia, for instance, or some other Italian bread – and wine as well.
Carapelli put up a good preparation of dried tomatoes in olive oil, called Le Delizie della Tavola. Alternatively soak dried tomatoes in water until they begin to be tender and plump: do not leave them until they are sodden.
Grill pepper halves, cut-side down, until black and blistered. Lay a folded tea towel over the top and leave for 30 minutes, then skin and cut into strips. Soak the drained anchovy fillets (keep the oil) in milk for 1 hour, then drain and cut lengthways in half.
Layer peppers, anchovies and tomatoes into a deep refrigerator box with a close-fitting lid. Pour over the anchovy oil, then enough olive oil to cover generously. Pepper well. Cover the box, and store in the refrigerator for 6 hours or up to 5 days.
Before setting out on the picnic, taste and add more pepper. Then tear basil leaves over the top, and put back the lid firmly. The dark reds and chestnut-brown colours make a beautiful sight in contrast with the basil and it is a delight to dip bread into the rich and appetizing oil, as you eat this lively salad.
8 duck or chicken legs
2 large juicy cloves of garlic, halved, crushed
4 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons black pepper
¼ teaspoon nutmeg, mace or quatre-épices
1 large bay leaf, cut into fragments
1 teaspoon thyme leaves
goose, duck or chicken fat or lard
large sprig of thyme (see recipe)
The simplest way of transforming meat, poultry and – above all – fish, is to season them well in advance of cooking. The effect of this mild curing is astonishing, and savoury out of proportion to the forethought required.
Rub poultry all over with the garlic. Mix salt and seasonings and rub over the pieces, especially on the cut side. Cover and leave in the refrigerator overnight. Next day put into a heavy pan, cover with melted fat or lard and, in the latter case, add the thyme sprig. Include any bits and pieces of bay leaf, etc.
Bring to the boil, reduce to a simmer and leave uncovered until the legs are cooked, about 25 minutes for chicken, 45 minutes or longer for duck, depending on your interpretation of the word simmer. The legs should be lightly browned: should they be on the pale side, colour them by dry-frying in a non-stick pan. Drain well and serve tepid or cold. On other occasions they are delicious served hot.
Apple mayonnaise: mix together an equal quantity – say, 150 ml (¼ pt) each – of firm apple purée and mayonnaise made with groundnut or sunflower oil, and lemon juice, or a mild white wine vinegar. This sauce needs a slight discordance to give depth, so add a final seasoning of grated horseradish, wasabi or mustard.
500 g (1 lb) each raw minced veal and pork, or veal and beef
4 eggs
1 clove garlic, crushed and finely chopped
1 finely chopped onion
a handful of parsley, chopped
pepper, salt
2 hard-boiled eggs
60 g (2 oz) cooked ham
60 g (2 oz) Provolone or Gruyère cheese
Elizabeth David’s polpettone – meat loaf- from Italian Food makes ideal picnic food. It tastes good and looks beautiful when sliced to show the centre. In Florence, where polpettone is a great domestic speciality, it tastes best when made with veal and beef: here veal and pork give a better result. The traditional method of cooking is to brown the roll of meat, then braise it in wine and stock either on top of the stove or in a low oven: in her gloriously illustrated and amplified new edition of Italian Food, Mrs David suggests baking it in a rectangular loaf tin or terrine which makes it even more practical for a picnic.
Mix ingredients down to and including pepper and salt, using your hands. Coarsely chop and mix together the three remaining ingredients.
Set the oven at gas 2, 150°C (300°F). Line a loaf tin or rectangular terrine with greaseproof or baking parchment, brushed with a little melted butter.
Pat out the meat mixture into a square the length of the tin or terrine, on a lightly floured board. Put the chopped mixture down the centre and bring the meat mixture up and over it, forming a big sausage shape. Lower it into the tin or terrine, lay a butter paper on top and bake for about 1½ hours, removing the paper after 1 hour for the top to brown. Serve cold for a picnic (usually this dish is eaten hot, perhaps with a sauce made from tomatoes, but it tastes even better cold).
Boil eggs for 6 minutes, drain and tap them lightly all over with a spoon to crack them. Fragments of shell may drop off, but try to avoid this. Put back in the pan. Cover with cold water. Add 2 tablespoons orange pekoe tea, 2 teaspoons salt, 2 tablespoons dark soya sauce and, if you like, a generous pinch of aniseed. Simmer gently for 1 hour, covered. Remove and leave to soak in the water for a few hours if possible (1 hour will, in fact, do). Remove and drain the eggs. Shell them at the picnic, when people will discover to their delight the most beautifully marbled patterns on the white. Inside the eggs are creamy.
125 g (4 oz) each flour and rolled oats
125 g (4 oz) butter, or mixed butter and vegetarian fat or lard
1 egg
¼ teaspoon salt
1 medium onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
60 g (2 oz) butter
500 g (1 lb) ripe tomatoes, skinned, seeded, chopped
tomato concentrate or cayenne or finely chopped chilli or harissa
1 large egg
half-and-half or single or soured cream
1 heaped tablespoon grated Parmesan
30-60 g (1-2 oz) grated dry Cheddar
thyme
This dish, one of the few I can claim to have invented, is a particular favourite of vegetarian friends. The tomato sauce and the pastry can be made in advance.
Make pastry in the usual way, line a 23-cm (9-inch) tart tin, prick the base with a fork and bake blind at gas 5, 190°C (375°F), until set firm but not coloured – approximately 10 minutes.
Meanwhile make a reduced and pulpy tomato sauce by softening the onion and garlic in the butter, then adding the tomatoes and boiling them down. Season to taste with concentrate or hot seasonings, and salt. Spread on the pastry case.
Break the egg into a measuring jug, add enough cream to bring it up to 150 ml (¼ pt), and beat in the Parmesan and 30 g (1 oz) Cheddar. Season and pour over the tomato.
Top with a lattice of twisted pastry strips, or with 30 g (1 oz) grated Cheddar and a scatter of thyme. Return to the oven for about 25 minutes until the top is firm and lightly browned.
There can be no better finish than a fresh goat or sheep cheese and a basket of berries to go with it. If you live in Edinburgh or the southern outskirts of Glasgow, a picnic into the gentle country below these two towns might provide you with a slice of Humphrey Errington’s Lanark Blue that goes down so well with celery or crisp salad leaves, a hunk of bread and a glass of red or white wine (Casanova had a passion for Chambertin with Roquefort which the Lanark Blue so resembles, but something less glorious will do perfectly well).
Melons stuffed with strawberries are a delightful and transportable dessert. Choose a couple of large melons for 8 people (orange-fleshed ones tend to have most flavour), buy a pound of strawberries as well and 3 or 4 passion fruit. At home, remove lids from the melons with a zigzag Vandyke cut. Scoop seeds into a sieve over a bowl. Heat the juice with 4 tablespoons sugar and the pulp of the passion fruit. Do not let it boil for more than a second. Hull and halve the strawberries and add them to the tepid syrup, turning them over and over. Leave to cool. Pack into the melons and tie them tightly into plastic bags or wrap in clingfilm. Don’t forget to take a serving spoon to dislodge the melon pulp from the skin.
[Observer Magazine]
One of my earliest memories is of my father singing at Christmas Adeste fideles, Laeti triumphantes. He had a lovely tenor voice, clear, unaffected, warm and joyful. It burst from him, escaping his local government official envelope of striped grey trousers, black coat, even spats (when I was very young), with a vigour that makes me wonder what emotions were held back, deep inside, by the dam of his normal disciplined behaviour. He is ninety-two now (1988) and cannot sing anymore, but I still lack the nerve to probe this particular mystery.
He sang loudly in his (cold) bath. He sang at the weekends, taught us songs, while our mother played the piano. Above all, he sang at matins when we formed a demure, tidy row in church, about twelve rows back from the choir. Nobody else in the congregation sang very much. They were too refined. He didn’t care. I suspect he didn’t notice, but if we were silent, he would glance at us in a pained way, wondering if perhaps we might be coming down with something.
As a young man he had sung in church choirs and knew how to stress the psalms as they were chanted. ‘My heart is inditing of a good matter … Full of grace are thy lips … My tongue is the pen of a ready writer … O praise God in His Holiness, praise Him in the firmament of His power … Let everything that hath breath prai … ai … ai … aise the Lord!’ And come Christmas, he taught us how to pronounce choral Latin. ‘In dulcí jubilo. Now sing we all io, io …
Our heart’s joy reclineth In praespio!’ emerged from our infant throats without a stumble or inaccuracy.
Looking back now, I see that the greatest gift he gave me was not the rules for a good life, so sweetly and earnestly instilled, but the unconscious acceptance that music and poetry, especially in combination, are the greatest of man’s achievements. At every season, in every event that marks my life, that feeling is there. Words and music well up, comfort, companionship, pain and delight.
And so it is that we have always begun our Christmas in my father’s way – with carol singing, which by a strange coincidence, for his character was very different, happened to be my husband’s way. Our Christmas bears no relation to the old rollicking festivities of the distant past, and not even a very close relationship to the Christmas that was invented in Britain by the Victorians. Christmas tree, wreath for the front door, decorations never make an appearance until three o’clock on Christmas Eve. We switch on the radio and wait in a tense hush for that first pure note of the boy’s voice in Once In Royal David’s City from King’s College Chapel.
My father was at Cambridge. So was I. So were all of my husband Geoffrey’s family from the sixteenth century to his generation, when he and his brothers broke the rule and went to Oxford. As the choir comes nearer and we hear the red and white robes swishing gently to the sound, we are glad we are busy. That way we can disguise our tears as the chaplain reads the Bidding Prayer, reminding us of those who rejoice in a greater light and on a farther shore.
That is Christmas, our private but universal start. Our public start in the Wiltshire village of Broad Town is a more hilarious affair, the arrival of the local choir singing carols, greatly augmented by the children from the school, sundry parents, and cheerful hangers-on. For about ten years it was organized by a witty, literate, and musical priest, our vicar, now regrettably called to higher things in a grand parish close to Salisbury Cathedral.
One year he persuaded a farmer to clean the dung from his tractor so that a living Nativity tableau could be driven around the village from house to house. Mary sat on a bale of straw, lurching slightly. She clasped not the latest addition to the community, but a big baby doll with a wobbly halo. Joseph clenched his teeth as he tried to keep upright, clinging to a lantern. When they came to our house, everyone rushed to the door. The two protagonists were quite forgotten. It took a few unholy Wiltshire shrieks before they were helped down over the huge wheels and ushered to the front of the choir that by now was two verses into Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.
We stood in the open doorway, welcomed them as best we could.
The children rushed into the candlelit hall to see what this place offered to eat and drink. The grown-ups sat down. Cakes, biscuits and other treats were handed round as decorously as anyone could wish. The more daring children sipped a little mulled wine, but soon turned back to orange and lemon squash. The candles guttered, their light catching the raisins in the Christmas cake.
One memorable year our carolling was even on television, nationwide. To make a talking point – we were one small item in a food magazine programme – I had used Mrs Beeton’s mincemeat for the mince pies. An excellent recipe with rump steak in it, as well as the more usual beef suet. One small neighbour, the cheekiest boy in the village, decided to tease us. The cameras homed in on him. He bit into a mince pie, wrinkled his nose, laughed at me, and said, ‘disgusting’. Which gave life to what might otherwise have been a boring interlude for those inhabitants of Great Britain who did not have the good fortune to be acquainted with the 570 souls of Broad Town parish.
When everything was eaten up, and Silent Night, Holy Night sung, as always, at my husband’s request, the BBC team began to take down their tripods and pack up their equipment. The last little girl emerged from the loo. The vicar shooshed his flock to the door. Bidding us goodbye he swung his long black coat into place, adjusted the silver clasp, and called back over his shoulder, ‘Count the spoons! You never know what I may have concealed about my person!’ A shame that this best of all priestly exits was uttered off camera.
General advice for entertaining carollers: keep everything as small as possible, so that it is easy to eat without crumbs everywhere. Don’t try to be original. In my experience, clever food is not appreciated at Christmas. It makes the little ones cry and the old ones nervous.
About this time of year, in 1978, we found ourselves in Crete, and for a few days under the wing of Johnny Craxton, the painter, an old friend of my husband’s. On one jaunt he took us up into the hills above Chania to visit a family he knew well. After the hospitable preliminaries, we were shown round the white-walled nest of a house, a tiered dovecot of a house round a courtyard, goats and chickens, hay and sacks of provisions below, humans above, with cheeses, herbs and home-made soap drying on the ledges of every windy aperture.
The men had just come home with the new-pressed olive oil, green-gold and thick. It was, they remarked, so welcome at that time of year. Why, I asked? Advent of course, a season of fasting for them, no meat, no eggs. On oil, olives, vegetables, fruit and bread, they got themselves into physical as well as spiritual trim for Christmas. I hope they ate fish, but milk, cheese and butter were out.
In that sunny world, citrus orchards laden with fruit, sweet-smelling narcissi wild in the fields, huge quinces and apples in the market, a lean diet seemed tolerable. No wonder the Greek Orthodox Church maintains a fast that our more northerly churches have long abandoned. In recent years, though, it has become easier to eat a lean diet and many of us find ourselves doing so instinctively at this time of year. So in deference to that wise Orthodoxy, I have chosen a meal that in its ingredients is a reminder of the Eastern Mediterranean where Christmas began.
The soup is made with red onions and red wine, earthy and substantial without being heavy. The main course is lamb, the celebratory meat of the Mediterranean, quite outside our Christmas menus that have centred on goose, turkey, pork and beef. The ragoût combines one very antique, biblical vegetable, the leek, with the aubergine that only arrived from south-east Asia and India via the Arabs in the thirteenth century.
The dessert is a favourite of ours, an unsweetened sheep’s milk junket that we first encountered in northern Spain, served in tall, 150 ml (¼ pt) pots of glazed rough earthenware. You could substitute Channel Island cow’s milk, though it lacks the dazzling white richness of sheep’s milk. This is eaten with alternate mouthfuls of ripe, translucent persimmon, a fruit that came to the Mediterranean this century from Japan. Sharon fruit, the milder, tannin-free variety that can be eaten when firm, may be served instead, but it cannot match the true persimmon for flavour.
To tell when a persimmon is ripe for eating, cradle it in your hand: it should feel like a jelly held in place – just – by the skin. If it is still firm, its tannin will pucker your mouth. Once at the right stage, persimmons can be stored in the lowest part of the refrigerator for a day or two.
The persimmon has become a favourite Christmas fruit of Italy, where its orange globes ripen on bare branches long after the leaves have fallen. A pity the Three Kings are not still around: its beauty and splendour would have gone well with their jewelled images.
1 kg (2 lb) red onions
a well-flavoured olive oil
4 cloves garlic, chopped
½ teaspoon coarse salt
500 g (7 lb) can chopped tomatoes, plus 2 or 3 fresh tomatoes, skinned, seeded and chopped
250 ml (8 fl oz) Beaujolais or other full-bodied red wine
salt, pepper
2S slices of baguette per person, or thick slices of a more interesting bread
fresh thyme leaves
Start by making a herb stock, which can be done 1–2 hours in advance. Simmer together, for 25 minutes, 1¾ litres (3¼ pt) water and 1 scant teaspoon of salt with several branches of fresh thyme or 1 teaspoon dried thyme, 8 branches parsley, 3 bay leaves, 3 cloves of garlic, all tied into a muslin. Finally, remove the bag, squeezing out the liquid, and keep until required.
If the onions are large, quarter them. If medium to small, cut them in thirds. Then slice thinly. Stir them in a large soup pot with 4–5 tablespoons olive oil over a low heat. When they are coated, leave to stew down slowly, about 30 minutes in all, stirring occasionally.
Pound the garlic with the coarse salt, then stir it into the soft onions with all the tomato and about a mugful of the herb stock. Add ½ teaspoon salt, cover and stew 15 minutes. Add the wine and boil vigorously without a lid to reduce to a slack purée. Pour in the remaining stock, half cover and leave to simmer 25 minutes. Check seasoning, adding pepper.
Brush the bread with oil and bake until nicely browned in a moderate oven. Put into 8–10 bowls, ladle on the soup. Add a little olive oil to each and sprinkle with fresh thyme. Alternatively, you could just serve the bread with the soup, or half and half. The slices should end up crisp all through, and thick.
4 medium-sized aubergines
salt
the white part of 4 leeks
olive oil and butter
One hot afternoon the Hodja, the divine fool of Islam, of whom many stories are told, sat down sleepily under a walnut tree at the edge of a field of purple aubergines. As he dozed off he wondered why God in his infinite wisdom had caused aubergines to grow at ground level and walnuts high on trees of great height: surely they would be easier to harvest the other way round? A little later he was woken by a walnut falling on his head. ‘Now I understand.’
For this dish choose aubergines of a size you would not care to have landing on your head. Peel them or not as you please.
Dice and salt the aubergines. Leave for 1 hour, then drain, rinse if too salty, then dry. Slice leeks into matchstick shreds. In a large sauté pan, cook aubergine until meltingly tender in oil. Aim for a moist result, lightly browned in places. Add extra oil as required. In a separate pan, cook the leek in butter and its own juices, stirring all the time: aim to keep a slight crispness. Season and mix with the aubergine.
Whereas aubergine can be cooked in advance and reheated, leeks must be done at the last minute.
16 noisettes, a good cm (½ inch) thick
16 large vine leaves
8 sheets fila pastry
melted butter
salt
1 egg white
lemon wedges
6 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons lemon juice
about 125 ml (4 fl oz) red wine
coarsely ground pepper
3 cloves garlic, crushed, chopped, plus 1–2 teaspoons rigani, oregano or marjoram
Noisettes are a good choice for a special meal, as they can be prepared in advance, then cooked at the last moment. The first recipe is Greek, from Claudia Roden. The second Provençal, from Jean-Marc Banzo, of the Clos des Voilettes at Aix.
1. With vine leaves in fila pastry
Mix all the marinade ingredients together.
Trim the fat from the noisettes, leaving the ‘eye’ of lean meat and put into the marinade for up to 1 hour.
Pour boiling water over the vine leaves, if packed in brine, and soak until palatable. (In summer use fresh leaves blanched until just limp in boiling water: always avoid using canned leaves as they are too tender.) Drain both the meat and the leaves.
Cut the sheets of fila pastry in half lengthways and brush with melted butter. Salt the noisettes, wrap each in a vine leaf and put at the narrow end of each pastry strip. Then flip over the sides, and roll up and seal the ends with a dab of egg white. Brush all the packages with melted butter.
To cook, either bake for 10 minutes on the top rack in the oven preheated to gas 6, 200°C (400°F), or – and I think this is better – deep-fry for 4–5 minutes, until golden brown, in oil at a temperature of 170°C (340°F). These timings give pink meat.
Serve with lemon wedges and the ragoût (opposite), or alternatively with a chicory salad containing coriander or watercress and a nut oil dressing.
500 g (1 lb) ratatouille
2 pieces of caul fat
8 long noisettes, each weighing 125–150 g (4–5 oz) trimmed
500 g (1 lb) cloves garlic, peeled
200 ml (7 fl oz) milk
200 ml (7 fl oz) crême fraîche, or mixed soured and double cream
2. Crépinettes with creamed garlic
If you are serving the aubergine and leek ragoût (page 444), substitute another vegetable stew for the ratatouille, e.g. peperonata.
Chop or mill the ratatouille coarsely, to make a rough, spreadable paste. Rinse the caul fat in warm water to make it supple and cut eight squares from it, large enough to enclose the pieces of lamb. Make a bed of ratatouille in the centre of each square, put the lamb on top, season and spread with more ratatouille (you may not need it all). Wrap caul round, cutting away any lumpiness, and turn the packages over on to a plate. Chill until required.
To make the creamed garlic, stew the cloves in milk and creams in a covered pan until soft – about 20 minutes. Crush, sieve and season, adding a little water or stock if necessary to give the purée a loose rather than stiff consistency.
To cook the crépinettes, first preheat the oven to gas 8, 230°C (450°F), then brown them on both sides quickly in a non-stick pan brushed with oil. When they are a rich golden colour, put them in the oven for 10 minutes.
Pour off surplus fat from the frying pan and stir in the garlic purée to heat through and take up any meaty juices. Put a noisette on each very hot plate, on a bed of garlic. Serve with plenty of bread.
1 generous litre (2 pt) sheep’s milk
3 teaspoons rennet or junket tablets
8 large ripe persimmons
8 lemon wedges
75 g (2½ oz) butter
75 g (2½ oz) rolled oats
125 g (4 oz) caster sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 level teaspoon each flour and baking powder, mixed
Bring the milk to blood heat, quickly stir in the rennet and pour into one large bowl or eight individual pots. Leave undisturbed at room temperature to set, then chill.
Cut off the stalk ends of the persimmons, like a lid, so that people can dig in with their spoons and squeeze in drops of lemon, taking alternate dips into the junket and fruit. Pass round Jersey cream and a bowl of golden granulated or preserving sugar, or clear honey, or chopped preserved ginger (e.g. Noel’s Simply Ginger). Biscuits are also a good idea, crisp ones, or something of the brandy snap type, like the following Lace biscuits:
Preheat oven to gas 4, 180°C (350°F). Grease two baking sheets with butter papers.
Melt butter over a low heat, stir in oats immediately. Remove from heat and add sugar, then egg. Stir in flour and baking powder. Drop 4 teaspoons of the mixture, well apart, on each baking sheet.
Bake until pale brown. Remove and press biscuits over a greased rolling pin to make a tuile effect. Should the biscuits stick to the sheet as they cool, put the sheet back in the oven briefly and try removing them again. [Observer Magazine]
Edible gifts between adults are, I think, something new in this country. Years ago the grocer put a little extra item into the Christmas order as a thank you for your continued and regular custom. We’ve all read about vicars’ wives and squires’ wives with beef tea. People in the country are often generous with a brace of pheasant or partridge, but this is not quite what we mean.
Until about thirty years ago, or perhaps even twenty, edible gifts were the department of the seven-year-old, who started rolling fondant the day the holidays began, colouring it pink, flavouring it lavishly with peppermint, to disguise the grey fatigue of the much-worked shapes. The lucky recipient, usually a grandmother or aunt, took them with a loving hug and a brave mouth.
Latterly, though, whether from America or Europe or from a new pride in our own culinary skill, has come a pleasant interchange of delightful things to eat, presents unique to the giver. I noticed it first in France, in the early Sixties (with some dismay as well as pleasure – what return could we make?) when friends came to lunch with a beautifully arranged basket of things from the garden, with a jar of raspberry jelly or a bottle of mirabelle liqueur tucked in as well.
Peripatetic Americans would order special boxes of sweets from the best confectioner in lieu of the cookies they would have contributed had they been at home. In the past ten years I have noticed friends in England doing the same thing. Nowadays, at Christmas, their jars and boxes of delights are a real addition to the basic repertoire of the season.
Indeed, the presents I now remember best are the edible ones. Perhaps because some of them are repeated regularly, Christmas would not be Christmas without them. All the recipes that follow are things the family has been particularly grateful to receive. The cynical Martial may have observed that gifts are fish-hooks. I would rather say, with Charles Lamb, that ‘Presents endear Absents’.
Feasting apart, pleasure also comes from wrapping and presentation, as much an indication of the intentions of the giver as the delicious contents. Some friends make a year-long search for elegant jars. I have a niece who haunts London paper shops for special Japanese papers and a daughter who eschews holly and bells for the stark clarity of plain colour and contrasting glitter. Everyone wraps presents, but edible presents seem to receive a special treatment.
Mix together, by hand or in the processor, 250 g (8 oz) each flour and grated Leicester cheese with 200 g (7 oz) lightly salted butter. A little cayenne can be mixed in at this stage if you like.
The dough will be on the tacky side. Scrape it on to two pieces of greaseproof and form into rolls. Chill until firm. Slice thinly and distribute on baking parchment-lined trays. Sprinkle with cayenne or a coarsely ground peppercorn mixture, or with sesame or poppy seeds. Bake about 10 minutes in an oven preheated to gas 4, 180°C (350°F) or until crisp – timing depends on thickness of the slices.
Pat Bellman, who comes to help with the cooking, has the most agreeable habit of giving us spiced nuts at Christmas. They are particularly good, and not arduous to make.
Have a good mixture of nuts, blanching or skinning as appropriate, and cutting brazils into pieces. Put 750 g (1½ lb) of nuts into a bowl. Mix a heaped tablespoon garam masala with 2 tablespoons peanut oil and mix thoroughly into the nuts. Spread them in a single layer on a baking sheet. Sprinkle with a teaspoon of fine sea salt. Give them 20 minutes in an oven preheated to gas 4, 180°C (350°F), shaking them every so often so they toast evenly.
Put the tomatoes into a large bowl and pour boiling water over them to cover them generously. Leave 5 minutes, scoop out with a slotted spoon, draining them well and put them into jars.
While they are still warm, pour over a robust olive oil and add some cloves of garlic, bay leaves and branches of rosemary as well as some lightly crushed peppercorns. Cover when they are cold, topping up the oil if necessary to make sure the tomatoes are completely submerged. Leave for at least a fortnight before using.
An attractive preserve for anyone who likes Middle Eastern and North African food. It is used as a flavouring for certain stews, and as an accompaniment to salads, fish and so on. Jars of the Kilner type are the most practical. Sometimes you can find them with coloured wire fastenings. Wash and rinse, then dry upside down on the rack of a low oven to sterilize them.
Quarter enough lemons or limes to fill the jars, cutting across twice at right angles, but not completely through – a tulip effect. Cram 1–1½ teaspoons coarse salt into each one and press it back into shape. Put a thin layer of salt in the base of each jar and pack in the fruit, pushing it down to get in as much as possible. Cut batons from two wooden skewers that can be fitted into the neck of the jars to hold the fruit down. Then pour in strained lemon or lime juice to cover. Alternatively use cold brine – dissolve 30 g (1 oz) coarse salt in 300 ml (½ pt) boiling water, then leave to cool.
Close the jars and store in a cool dark place for 3–4 weeks before broaching. As you remove the fruit, make sure that the remaining contents are submerged in the liquid. To use: rinse the lemons, cut completely into wedges, then scrape off and discard the pulp. If the peel is very salty, it can be soaked. For a salad or to serve as an accompanying relish, pour over olive or groundnut oil and sprinkle lightly with cayenne.
1 kg (2 lb) mixed firm mushrooms, prepared weight
juice of 2 lemons
fresh bay leaves and sprigs of thyme
a few juniper berries and peppercorns (mixed green, black and pink)
olive oil
1 medium onion, quartered
4 halves cloves garlic
5 halves shallots
thinly cut zest of 2 lemons
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
2 teaspoons lightly crushed black peppercorns
2 teaspoons lightly crushed juniper berries
3 generous sprigs thyme, 3 bay leaves
7 tablespoons white wine vinegar
2 teaspoons salt
The other day I happened to be passing the Neal Street Restaurant, and Antonio Carluccio gave me a jar of his pickled mushrooms. They reminded me of the quantities of ceps that I used to put up in oil when I was writing The Mushroom Feast. In those days the woods of our commune were full of ceps, chanterelles and hedgehog mushrooms (Hydnum repandum). Out of season, substitute close firm button and marron mushrooms, oyster mushrooms and fresh shiitake. Use an unfiltered olive oil, or at least one with a good flavour.
The bouillon can be used for several kilos of mushrooms, just keep the level topped up with boiling water and taste to make sure the mushrooms are not too strong.
Brush any earth from the mushrooms, quarter cultivated and marron mushrooms if they are 2½ cm (1 inch) across. Cut shiitake and oysters in convenient sections. Keep the two sorts of mushroom in separate bowls. Sprinkle with lemon juice, turn gently with your hands.
Tie the bouillon ingredients, down to and including bay leaves, loosely into a piece of muslin. Suspend in a large pan containing vinegar, salt and 1¼ litres (2¼ pt) water. Simmer steadily for 10 minutes, then bring to a rolling boil.
Put a small batch of mushrooms into a blanching basket and dunk in the bouillon. It should barely go off the boil. Timing from when it returns to the boil, give the mushrooms 2 minutes. Remove, draining the liquor back into the pan, and try a piece. The flavour should be very mildly sharp, just a little lemonish piquancy, and the texture quite firm. Make adjustments to the bouillon flavouring at this stage. Cook the remaining mushrooms in batches, giving the oysters and shiitake just a minute’s boiling.
When the mushrooms are cool, mix and pack them into sterilized jars, pushing 1–2 bay leaves down the sides (green side out) and scattering in a few juniper berries and peppercorns. Cover with olive oil and seal.
The mushrooms can be served directly as an hors d’oeuvre or in a salad. Or they can be added to a risotto, stuffing or sauce. The oil makes a splendid vinaigrette.
Note: you can augment the mushrooms with small whole pickling onions, shallots and cloves of garlic, just a few to each bottle. Skin them and put into the bouillon in a separate bag from the flavouring items: they should be tender enough after 10 minutes’ simmering and 2 minutes’ boiling, but check anyway.
1 kg (2 lb) clementines
600 g (1¼ lb) sugar
1–2 vanilla pods
Armagnac
Sometimes at the beginning of December you can buy very small, almost miniature clementines. These are the best for this preserve, especially if you intend to give it away and the look is important, but larger ones can be used.
Prick each clementine with a darning needle five times. Make a syrup with the sugar and 1 litre (scant 2 pt) water and add 1 long or 2 short vanilla pods. Boil steadily for 4 minutes, put in the clementines and bring to simmering point. Half-cover and simmer for 1 hour. Check every so often, removing any fruit that is on the verge of cracking, which spoils the appearance though not the flavour.
Drain and fill into hot dry presentable jars. Pour in Armagnac to come three-quarters of the way up the fruit. Meanwhile, reduce the syrupy cooking liquor to concentrate the sweetness. Keep tasting and remove from heat before it becomes very bitter. Cool to warm, then use to fill the jars. Divide vanilla pod if need be, then put a piece into each jar. Close and keep for a fortnight before using. (Surplus syrup can be kept for sauces and fruit salads.) [Observer Magazine]
*Author of The Golden Peaches of Samarkand, a study of exotics imported into China in the T’ang dynasty; recommended to anyone who’s interested in food, wine, spices etc.