Christmas

From Living Within, December, page 19.

A Christmas issue, and what to write about food and drink for this festive season when we are all probably reaching journalistic saturation point about now? I could give you some tips for the turkey or the spuds or try to persuade those of you who are not keen that sprouts are a treat but I have a confession to make; I have not spent too many Christmases in England as an adult and have chosen to be in France for the last few years instead. Although I am normally a staunch traditionalist, I have even stepped away from the turkey and its trimmings in the last couple of years and gone a bit native.

Now don’t get excited, I haven’t stepped too far into the abyss, we still eat our Christmas lunch on Christmas day not being able to get as enthused as the French about Le Réveillon, or Christmas Eve, (at least it is when it attaches to Christmas - there being another one that brings in the New Year just a week later which is a much grander affair in France); it would be cheating, after all, to start the feasting a day early by our British reckoning. But I have, with the blessing of my family, chosen other birds for the main feast and, just the once, ditched le pudding in favour of a very French bûche or yule log and one that I didn’t make myself.

Perhaps I should explain myself. In the corner of South West France that I have become familiar with, while looking similar to ours - pine trees, street decorations (albeit a bit more cellophane than twinkle), cards, snow scenes, Father Christmases (so many Father Christmases: municipal live ones who come to the house and drop presents for children; robotic ones that dance frenetically, and dare I say, a little suggestively, in the supermarkets, and the ones that dangle helplessly from shuttered windows like thwarted burglars - small, immobile and a bit the worse for wear) - Christmas, is in fact quite different there.

Climbing up drainpipes;
skiing down the guttering;
even the police station is not a safe haven.

The French of my acquaintance are well aware of our British traditions but do not really embrace them and take their own very seriously; these do not include bread sauce, or parsnips or heavily fruited anythings and, importantly, they do not contain crackers (which incidentally have no direct French translation and whose value cannot be explained with any sense of conviction to interested French parties; I know, I have tried - well, two people pull it, and there is a small explosion and inside a joke, that isn’t funny, to read aloud, and a paper hat …., you can see the basic problem). Crackers also need to be imported, which, while not impossible, may cause some problems, given the explosive element.

The French Christmas Eve dinner is likely to contain numerous courses, to have oysters as an hors d'oeuvre, a capon at it centre and cheese and good wine at its tail and, of course, there will be a bûche - a special log shaped seasonal cake which serves as traditional symbol of the ancient yule log that dates back to pagan times when a log was burned to celebrate and give thanks for warmth, life and the return of the sun.

The French do not typically wonder how to fit a 20lb turkey into an oven or how long it will take to cook safely because a 20lb bird is unthinkable to most of them; I have fought long and hard with the butcher to persuade him that I need a bigger bird but he remains unmoved and implacable and does not deal in super-sized poultry. So, over the years, I have come to join him in his way of thinking. The bird is a bit bigger than a large chicken and, arguably, has been treated somewhat harshly in surrendering its manhood in order to gain a little in girth and flavour. Capons, no longer much seen in the UK, are emasculated cockerels and are much prized by the French on feast days for the superiority of both their tenderness and flavour and, in SW France, beat the turkey hands down as the bird of choice on the Christmas table.

As for the year without pudding, it came as a surprise to me too that I was capable of such heresy; the stirring of the pudding is a family tradition that I have long preserved but I was persuaded by the modernisers in the family that an expertly crafted bûche made by a master pâtissier might be a superior way to finish the meal than a pudding which, while a favourite of mine, is admittedly decidedly rich. The yule log cake varies in France from the simple Genoise sponge, rolled and covered in buttercream and decorated in suitable loggy fashion, through parfaits of chestnut and chocolate to ice creamed confections - but, when in the hands of a French master in such matters, it would be hard to go wrong and I didn’t regret my decision to forgo our English favourite - it was a pretty fabulous alternative.

But I have it on good authority that there are those amongst the French who covet a few of our traditions too. Those who rather like the English penchant to decorate with more than a little zeal, those who quite like the extra (not to say, on occasion, excessive) time and care we put into the preparation and, in spite of the superior reputation of the French in this arena, those who have quite taken to the English mince pie (or tarte aux fruits secs as it is more properly known over there). In honour of this I have included a picture of my first batch of the year - mince pies with a macarooned topping - the sweetness and richness of the pie readily adjustable with the choice of pastry (short, flaky and buttery, or sweet and crisp), the brand of mincemeat and how you may have doctored it (with citrus - juice or rind - additional alcohol, for example) and how you choose to top them. If I were spending Christmas here, I would, of course be booking my Christmas bird about now with Paul and his team at the Game Larder in Claygate whose books are already open for business.

It remains only for me to wish you all joy in a celebration whatever traditions or customs you follow at this time of year, perhaps to throw in a Joyeux Noel or Joyeuses Fêtes, or more simply, my best wishes for this season of goodwill and festivity, to all, wherever you may be and whoever you may be with.

Erica x
www.acookinthekitchen.co.uk

“that martyr to the cause of cooking, the capon” ~Richard Olney

A little early for Christmas?

From Living Within November, p 17

I am probably amongst the first to complain when the Christmas themed aisle in the supermarket supersedes the one that recently contained picnic goods, when twinkle lights are up in the town centre before the clocks have turned back, or festive baubles are for sale in the garden centre when I have not yet given up hopes of an Indian summer. And yet, here we are, not quite Halloween as I write and November as this goes to press and I am about to counsel the need to think about Christmas.

In my defence, preserving some of the autumn’s bounty against a season of relative scarcity is an art almost as old as time, and long before Christmas became a focal point for this part of the world there were other Yuletide festivals celebrated with a bit of food and drink put by for the occasion as Mankind managed to find something worth looking forward to (not to mention an excuse for at least one day of overindulgence) during the long hard winter months.

So whether you are anticipating the shortest day and the subsequent resurgence of the sun, the birth of Jesus or any other Winterval observance I will make no further excuses for thinking ahead. If you look forward to the prospect of plum pudding, fruitcake or a mince pie or two and are not amongst those attempting to track down a rare Heston pud with concealed central orange, or who are not fond of over-sweetened under-fruited mincemeat, or do not crave heavily sugar-pasted cakes, you need to start getting out your mixing bowls about now.

For me, the baking aisle is currently at its most appealing. The packets of dried fruit have recently expanded in size and extended in range, the boxes of shredded suet are generously piled, and candied fruit and peel are easily available. Why the hurry to get started? Well mincemeat requires at least a fortnight to mature before using (and will benefit from more), puddings about a month after first cooking and fruitcakes will take as long as you can give them between baking and Christmas, with or without additional feeds of alcohol, to taste their best. The traditional marker for the pudding is ‘Stir-up Sunday’, the last Sunday before Advent and this year falling on November 25, legend having it that when the words “Stir-up, we beseech thee” are heard in the collect on that day they will serve as reminder to the baking faithful of their seasonal duty.

If anyone cares to join me in this annual ritual but is lacking a recipe here is one for mincemeat to get you started - the easiest of the three to make. The core ingredients and their proportions in relation to each other should always remain in the same ballpark but feel free to tinker - replace the almonds with other chopped nuts (pistachios, walnuts etc), use different types of alcohol (sherry, rum, whisky even), substitute contrasting preserved or candied fruit (dates, dried figs, prunes, cherries) for some proportion of the fruit or peel, or mix up your own ground spices (cinnamon, mace, nutmeg, cloves) - you can give your imagination a longish leash. Making mincemeat involves little more than assembling and mixing ingredients but the result will taste infinitely superior to anything you can buy on most supermarket shelves and is well worth the small amount of effort involved.

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MINCEMEAT

Ingredients:

250g each prepared:
suet; raisins; sultanas; currants, and cooking apples,
2 teaspoons ground mixed spice,
125g chopped, mixed, candied peel,
185g soft brown sugar,
30g flaked, nibbed or chopped almonds,
1 lemon,
80ml brandy

Method:

• coarsely chop the suet, raisins and sultanas (with a cook’s knife or, carefully, in a food processor on the pulse setting). Put into a large bowl and stir in the currants.
• peel, core and grate the apples and stir in with the dried fruit and suet.
• add in the spices and the mixed candied peel and the sugar and almonds and stir together.
• grate the zest of the lemon into the bowl and then add the squeezed juice and the brandy.
• stir all together thoroughly. Leave, covered, in a cool place for an hour or so, stir again and then use to fill sterilised jam jars. Cover with a secure lid and leave to mature in a cool dry place or in the fridge for at least two weeks before using.

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Whether you are making puddings, cakes or mincemeat, do remember that they all involve long lists of ingredients and there is always a real and present danger of missing something out. My advice? - before you do anything else, write out a checklist of everything to be included in the order in which it is used in the recipe, then check off each item as you go along and you can be sure you won’t overlook anything.

I will leave the final word to Elizabeth David and lay any absolute purist’s minds at rest on the subject of suet out of a box:

“The friend … was very insistent that bought shredded suet should not be used. It would prevent the mincemeat from keeping, so she told me. I am afraid that I disobeyed her instructions and used bought packet suet. (Shredding suet is a terrible task. I cannot make myself spend so much time and effort on it.) The first batch … kept for five years.”

Erica x
(www.acookinthekitchen.co.uk)

Apple Pie

From Living Within, October (page 17).

My neighbour Barry happened to drop by the other day with a bag full of Bramley apples from the tree in his back garden. The apple harvest this year has been a paltry affair in many UK orchards, so I hear, our weather having interfered with the delicate timings in which the blossom might bloom and the bees might visit - wind and rain not being particularly conducive to either. But Barry brought some cheer with him as his tree is currently giving out a bumper crop, he also gave me the ingredient secrets to the success of his wife Jill’s apple pie and that was my cue to get out my pie pans and put this favourite back on the menu.

I like to think of apple pie as English. The French have probably rightly claimed the more showy tart(e), but the great US of A seems to hold apple pie dear too - something about “as American as …” springs to mind. Given that the American expression, if not the pie first favoured by its distant colonials, was only coined in the twentieth century, our claim might have an edge, a recipe having been recorded by Chaucer in 1381. But the Dutch and the Swedes make traditional versions too and the Germanic peoples have their strudel so I am not going to waste too much time wondering who has the best claim to ownership and will concentrate instead on what might make a good one.

An apple pie is a thing of simple parts - apples, sugar, pastry - the sophistication lies broadly in the choices you make within those three basic ingredients.

There are hundreds of varieties of apple differing not only in flavour, texture, acidity and sweetness but in how they behave when cooked. ‘Cookers’ are considered a bit of an English speciality, naturally sour they also have a tendency to disintegrate into a coarse puree on exposure to heat. 'Eaters’, by contrast, while varying from one to another, are sweet enough to eat in their natural state and, generally speaking, the sweeter they are the more inclined they will be to withstand heat without collapsing. Cookers are hence perfect for a pie or crumble or a sauce to accompany roast pork, for example, but are not the best apples to choose if you want to make a tart where the ability of the apple to hold its shape is an essential element of the finished presentation.

The most easily available cooker is the Bramley, large and green and misshapen, and with the beauty of being a little beaten out of shape if they are direct from the tree instead of the supermarket. If you want to spread your culinary wings and test your tastebuds a little, the RHS Gardens at Wisley are currently selling more unusual varieties outside their garden centre. There you can find irregular shaped and coloured rarities - cookers and eaters from their own trees for £1.50 per kg.

The pastry should be given due consideration. Shortcrust is my preference, unsweetened, but you could use puff as well. I have heard that it is a common thought that there is no need to make your own, and, if I am honest, there isn’t, but I am beholden to let you know that ready made shortcrust will not be the same as home made, and by that I mean that it will not be as good. I know that “life is too short …” but trust me, pastry is easy. Keep your ingredients well chilled before you use them, keep your touch light and give the dough time to 'rest’ - a half hour in the fridge after making and before rolling, and a little time after rolling and before assembly and cooking is all that is needed. Even the ready made stuff will benefit from a bit of a rest. Pastry making makes a bit of a mess, it requires a little skill (but not much), it benefits from you taking as little time and making as little effort as humanly possible and is almost infinitely reparable if you get into trouble. Ignore the phone, keep a cool head and enjoy the gentle therapy of getting your hands a little mucky; it will make the difference between an acceptable pie and a really good one and add a warm glow of pride to the whole affair.

Single crust (a lid on top of the fruit) or double (pastry lining the pie dish and sandwiching the fruit with a crust on top) - either is acceptable; some consider the former more English and the latter more star-spangled and others may even leave the pie topless (a step too far in my opinion). If choosing a double crust go all out to avoid an undercooked bottom; there are various tricks and tips for ensuring the pastry does not get too bogged down in excess liquid, but apples do contain some natural thickening agents so are easier than most fruit when attempting to avoid this crime against pie.

As for the sugar - almost any will do. Soft brown will add a caramel touch, white or slightly golden will give a cleaner sweetness. Sweeten according to your taste and that of the apples you have chosen but avoid overdoing it - a well flavoured apple will have acidity and its tart tones should not be overpowered by too much sugar. A little caster sugar can also be sprinkled over the top of the crust before baking (brushed first with a little milk, beaten egg, or melted butter) and add a glazed crunch to the top of the pie.

You can tinker a little as you will. Some add ground spice - cinnamon, nutmeg, or cloves, for example - and others consider this de trop. Some like additional fresh berries or autumn fruit - blackberries, blueberries, damsons - or dried sweetness in the form of raisins or sultanas, and some may add a dash of spirits - Brandy perhaps, or better still Calvados. Pile the fruit high below the crust; the fruit will shrink while cooking but the uncooked pie should have a nice dome that will set in place as it bakes. Once assembled, a few steam holes cut in the top crust to allow moisture to escape during cooking, the pie requires an oven hot enough to cook the pastry but not so hot that the outside crust browns before the fruit and the bottom have had sufficient time to cook - the fruit should be tender and the juices thick as they bubble up around it.

Fresh from the oven, wait until the pie calms down a little before serving; it can be served hot, warm or at room temperature with custard, cream or ice cream as you choose. Cold accompaniments provide a satisfying contrast to a warm pie and hot custard can liven up a cool one. Recipes are easy to find or come to a class and I will give you mine and a helping hand with it.

“good apple pies are a considerable part of our domestic happiness” ~Jane Austen

Erica x
www.acookinthekitchen.co.uk
www.acooksblog.com

pandowdy

Until last week I had never heard of such a thing as a pandowdy; it is what it seems, apparently, something that looks dowdy in the pan. Hardly inspiring on the face of it but oddly intriguing to one who has a small fetish for American food, particularly sweet food and food with a good name.

Now when I say ‘fetish’, I don’t mean all American food, obviously. We in the U of K are practically brought up believing that Americans eat unlikely food out of packets (mac'n'cheese, Betty Crocker cakes, pie filling, egg whites, pancakes), that they eat over-large portions, that there is too much sugar in much of their food, that they make strange liaisons (Jello and mayonnaise, jam and peanut butter) and these things are both confusing and a little off putting to those of us who have no depth of experience in what it is to eat American. I am, of course, generalising and basing judgment on not knowing very much about what I speak, but American 'otherness’, while it continues to entice and fascinate, sometimes is just plain baffling.

Nevertheless and in spite of my, up to this point unmentioned, loathing of tablespoons and cup measures as a way of being precise with dry goods and butter(!) back to my 'fetishising’. I love the mystique that shrouds the all American dishes that I know by name if not by actual acquaintance with the real McCoy. Succotash (sufferin’ or otherwise), Gumbo, Brown Betty, Buffalo Wings, Chowder, Chilli, Corn dogs and S'mores; I could go on.

We are so familiar with it that American food culture has almost become a part of our heritage too. A hotdog sings off-screen in a cinema ad in a well known Nora Ephron film and everyone knows of its cultural signifcance (and, conversley, of the unimportance of listening to its sung message in a cinema) and exactly what that might look like. I am, for the record, not a fan of the hotdog - anyone who has read George Orwell’s description in 'Coming up For Air’ will understand my aversion, although I have heard that Bubbledogs in the heart of London is doing its bit to 'upmarketise’ them, if you will permit me a little Billy Wilderesque Americanese of my own. I am a sucker for the tales of community and history that sit alongside much of American culinary development and was thrilled to come across something new.

How did I come across the pandowdy? While researching an article on good old apple pie. I liked the name (and prefer it as one word) and yet, as often happens, the pictures on Google and the recipes that I found failed to inspire - there was broken-pie dough, above and below in some, and they looked flat and, well, dowdy (can’t really complain that I wasn’t warned). But looking again on my own book-shelves, I found a version from Larry Forgione, of An American Place restaurant - now sadly closed - that I liked the sound of (no pictures so I could only guess at the look). Larry had been chatting with Jim Beard (and don’t try and type that name into Google while you look for Jim’s version of events - you will be quietly chastised and asked if you meant James Beard, an establishment figure commanding hushed reverence now that he is dead, it seems) and between them, their research pointed to the fact that the pandowdy would have originally likely often been made out of stale bread. This sounded much more interesting. A dessert with the name pandowdy shouldn’t involve too much work - you can imagine it cooked in a skillet over a fire in a settlers cabin and needing no more than apples, stale bread, some fat, a little sweetener and some spice.

So off I went, without a skillet but with some teeny weeny ramekins (not sure where my others have gone) as, sort of, recommended by Laurence (not sure Google will allow me to familiarise myself with him as Larry given that he is considered by some the godfather of American cooking) and here is my version of his version of the pandowdy. They were great. They were super easy, and they have added a little more to my American repertoire. Shoo Fly Pie might even be next.

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APPLE PANDOWDY

Ingredients:

thin slices of firm (stale) white bread,
unsalted butter at room temperature,
granulated sugar for sprinkling,

3 large cooking apples peeled, cored, and sliced
2 tablespoons black strap molasses or black treacle,
80 g light soft brown sugar,
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon,
¼ teaspoon grated nutmeg,
¼ teaspoon ground cloves,
2 tablespoons dark rum>,
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice>,
1 tablespoon vanilla extract,
60g butter (melted),

Method:

• preheat the oven to 190°C/375°F/GM 5.
• Using a cutter, cut the bread into rounds that will fit snugly into the bottom of a ramekin; you will need two pieces of bread for each ramekin and about four large ramekins.
• Butter the bread, on both sides, with the room temperature butter and sprinkle the upper side with the granulated sugar.
• Place a bread round, sugar side down, in the bottom of each ramekin leaving an equal number aside as lids for later.
• put the apples, molasses, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, rum, lemon juice, vanilla extract, and melted butter into a large bowl and toss together so that the apples are evenly coated with all the sugar and flavourings
• divide the apple mixture between the ramekins, filling them nearly to the top and pushing the fruit down well, drizzle any juice left in the bowl equally over the filled ramekins.
• top the pandowdys with the second bread round, sugar side upwards.
• put the ramekins on a baking sheet and bake in the preheated oven for about 25 minutes or until the bread is golden brown and the apples are tender. Put the ramekins on a rack to cool for a few minutes.
• serve the dowdys in their dishes while still warm. Pour over a little cream before eating.

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“Once I figure out how something was made, I can start figuring out how I think it should be made.” ~ Larry Forgione

Erica x
(www.acookinthekitchen.co.uk)

Sultana Grape Cake

September showing signs of exhaustion and no longer able to reasonably promise a delayed chunk of summer, as the days are chilling around the edges and drawing in their nights, my thoughts had begun to turn to the next long season - winter - never a winning prospect when you have been used to warmth and light however brief that exposure. But before I get too bogged down in Sophie Gråbøl’s latest sweater choices and the noir ahead I must not to lose sight of the richness of autumn waving its apples and figs and pears and pumpkins full in my face while I am making early heavy weather in my head.

Autumn certainly has its own charms and a trip to my local Middle Eastern supplier a week ago jolted me back to the more current season offering as it did not only the beautiful purple figs that I was expecting but also some tiny, sweet, Turkish sultana grapes that have flown in alongside them. I always imagine that I will bring them home and make Moorish influenced Meditterranean dishes and yet, even once I have absent-mindedly eaten my way through a ludicrous number as I search my books for inspiration, I seem to have enough left over to put me in mind of cake instead. Romantically, I want it to be from Arabia, or, at least, from Arab influenced Sicily, but, hard as I look, the grape cake ideas that I find invariably have their roots in Tuscany. I give in. I have made a mongrel cake - Tuscan inspired, partly Turkish in provenance, made in England from imported ingredients. Hardly a model for the Slow Food Movement, but, nonetheless, popular amongst its audience and a lighter form of fruit cake than the traditional sultana heavy varieties.

The cake is based on Jamie’s ‘Torta di Nada’ - a grape cake normally made with Italian purple fragola grapes made instead with blueberries by Jamie and published in 'Jamie’s Italy’. I substituted reduced vin moelleux (desert wine) for the milk and added a sprinkle of demerara sugar to the top for some crunch and a little visual interest for a version lacking the punch of the purple in the top layer. I do love Jamie, at least when he is not mistaking himself for a new messiah and wading in a little deeper into some complicated problems than his level of expertise always allows (but I suppose, more generously, at least it shows he cares) but his recipes for baking, in my experience, should often be read in the context of others. Baking, I am sure, is one of Jamie’s strengths, but I have a feeling that there may be home economists involved in his publications that aim to make these recipes more universally friendly and perhaps they lose a little of their finesse in so doing.

But I have delayed this post long enough for lack of enthusiasm for re-writing a recipe that I am not sure I would make again without further tweaking, so I will give you a link instead for someone else who has (American measures I’m afraid) and who has made a few, very minor, tweaks of her own and acknowledge that it is not bad as is.

And for now, I will add some romantic imaginings of the vendange in sunny September days on the continent to my day (painfully hard work as it actually is for the participants), put thoughts of winter and woolies on the back burner and enjoy the 'decent sunny spells’ the BBC is predicting will come out of the clouds here this afternoon, and maybe take a look at Claire Ptak’s 2008 grape cake suggestion for the next time.

“The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.” ~Galileo

Erica x
(www.acookinthekitchen.co.uk)

Blackberry Season

From Living Within, September, p20

Foraging has become a buzzword in the food world and the “forager”, as introduced by Alice Waters in her famed California restaurant Chez Panisse, a finder of food or, more accurately, liaiser between restaurant and food suppliers, has become de riguer in many a fashionable London restaurant. Foraging sets me in mind of the great outdoors, searching for wild foodstuffs - mushrooms, berries, leaves - when in fact the forager in question at these chichi restaurants may be more often employed on-line or on the phone calling in orders from wholesalers, shops or farm-based producers.

While on holiday in France recently I was easily persuaded by a local wine maker to spend a morning with her and her daughter (and a few other interested parties) ‘foraging’ in their back garden (more of a small-holding really but let’s not split hairs). We went in search of leaves and fruit and other vegetation growing wild in amongst the washing lines, ducks and sheep and grazing patches and we learned (very quickly) how to tell the tasty amaranth and fat hen leaves and the edible black elderberries apart from their more toxic look-a-like neighbours.

We picked nettles, stinging ones, and although I don’t think there was a person there untroubled by smarting fingertips at the end of the morning, we were taught how to pick them, without gloves, to avoid the stinging hairs (for the record by folding the leaves from the underside which are sting free); we collected borage leaves and cucumber flavoured borage flowers growing underneath the courgette patch, the French somewhat bemused by my suggestion that the latter might ever find a place floating in a glass of Pimms, and we shook nigella seeds out of pods growing straight out of the bricks of the kitchen wall.

Although our word forage most likely derives from a Middle English adoption of an Old French word, and Alice Waters’ inspiration for setting up Chez Panisse in the 1970s was almost entirely French, the French do not seem to use an equivalent word to our forage, at least not with an equivalent meaning, or to celebrate an equivalent restaurant post in their best restaurants. For them, what we call foraging, is a simple act of collecting free bounty from the earth, an activity as natural to some country dwellers as sourcing good bread in the morning and nothing to make much of a fuss about.

An attempt at explanation of a restaurant concept such as is winning awards for Réne Redzepi in his two Michelin starred, 2012-Best-Restaurant-in-the-World winning, Copenhagen based restaurant Noma (famed for serving foraged live ants in its London pop-up guise at Claridges this year) to our French counterparts while we sorted and cleaned and cooked our foraged leaves and berries was no easy feat - they were beyond puzzled. Restaurants seem to them far more straightforward - good food, appropriately chosen wine to taste alongside, and they can do without absurd theatrics thank you very much. Our wild food was, incidentally, surprisingly good. We made gratins, quiches, crumbles and compotes with our free bounty and enjoyed a fabulous lunch even with a slightly trepidatious first bite of nettle quiche, and, true to the more usual occupation of our hosts, we were offered appropriate wines to taste alongside too.

But back to the point. It is September and, having now gained a small taste for foraging but lacking the skill and confidence to tell a deadly mushroom from an edible one or to be really sure of many wild leaves, the easiest and most recognisable food for me to forage in my own locale is our instantly recognisable blackberry, currently fruiting liberally on our locally available bramble bushes. In the woods or in town, trailing through trees or over fences and road signs, in the backs of untended gardens or allotments, these blackberries are much smaller than the cultivated kind found packaged expensively in the supermarket but their size belies their more fulsome flavour, more subtly sweet and powerfully sour than the commercially grown big boys. An easy to gather foraging staple that risks only a few grazes and some blue staining to the fingers and forearms as one reaches for just one more perfect specimen hanging tantalisingly at a full body stretch.

If your harvest is sufficient, you might consider making jam, pie, tart, crumble or cobbler. With fewer in your foraging basket (and it is never wise to fill your container too full as the fruit is very delicate when properly ripe and will be damaged by being weighed down) you can sprinkle them over your breakfast, heat them with a little sugar for a compote to go with ice cream or yoghurt, blitz them in a creamy fool or add them to apples to stretch them further while giving the apples the benefit of their colour and sharpness; apple and blackberry complement each other perfectly and both will be enhanced by a sprinkle of cinnamon. We have already used them in my house to decorate a French fruit tart and to stud some airy fat pancakes but the season will be on us for a while to come yet and there is scope for much much more.

I shall not offer you recipes here - use your favourite source for a pastry crust, a crumble or cobbler topping and you need only tinker with quantities of sugar depending on the sweetness of the fruit and your own palate. A sprinkle of caster or icing sugar over a finished desert will remedy undue tartness and over sweetening can be put right with a squeeze or two of lemon or lime; spice can be added according to taste but, above all, keep it simple, sugar and spice should be used to enhance the natural flavour not to mask it.

“You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
like thickened wine: summer’s blood was in it
leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
picking.” ~Seamus Heaney, 'Blackberry Picking’

Erica x
(www.acookinthekitchen.co.uk)

Bon Retour!

I have been visiting La Belle France for a long time now and in all these years, while my experience of it has changed by subtle degrees, it has never ceased to hold a slightly romantic attraction of ‘otherness’. The language for starters sets it apart but there is so much more. The architecture, the quirks of engineering and design, the multi layered levels of formalised politesse - charming when 'bonjouring’ an entire boulangerie full of folk first thing in the morning, a little scarier when working out the niceties of intimacy that dictate a tu instead of a vous or when a ’re-bonjour’ is necessary following the embarassment of meeting the same person twice in one day.

The French, by and large, are a tad more stylish than the basic English person - you need only look to their opticians and eyewear to see that there is no level of detail that is too small to be important in the question of how one presents oneself to the outside world.

Les Parasites, available at (and worn by the staff and clientele of) Optique Martin, Ste Foy la Grande

But in the midst of all these differences it is, unsurprisingly, the differences in food that I am focused on the most. As a youngster my sights were set on treats that have long since fallen from my radar: Hollywood chewing gum;

shell shaped sea-side sweeties; dazzling platters of fruits de mer and coquilles st jacques, unheard of in my corner of Blighty and incredibly exotic for a family whose mother didn’t like fish (but whose father really really did); french frites served from a van on a camping site significantly outclassing anything we were used to at home, and bottled mineral water - a revelation of luxury and taste.

As an adult I am no longer restricted to restaurants or my mother’s Scots home cooking (mince and tatties can be cooked in France too), the choice is more often than not mine what the family will eat and shopping for food is different in France.

The markets sell summer produce that I am familiar with - tomatoes, onions, courgettes, aubergines, corn, strawberries, apricots, peaches, and plums, but the varieties, ripeness and flavours surpass those that are available to me back home - this produce has been grown in local soil, ripened under local sun and some of it won’t last the day without deterioration (notably the strawberries) and so must be transacted between producer and individual customer before lunch time in order to be enjoyed at its prime.

But market shopping is a relatively straightforward affair. What is good and fresh and current is staring you in the face - you can reach out and touch it, choose it, ask questions about it, afford to give it a go and make mistakes with it; it is the specialist magasins that provide more of a challenge. From knowing your pain from your baguette first thing in the morning and understanding when a pain au chocolat becomes a chocolatine or just a plain choco there is much to be learned about shopping for food in France.

brioche aux pralines roses de Lyon - M Chevalier has been travelling

The Patisserie ups the ante a little but here you have the advantage that you are rarely pressed for time. The queues are often long and slow, but levels of patience (at least amongst the natives) will keep similar pace and so the pressure is off. Nothing pleases Mme Chevalier (of M Chevalier’s chocolaterie/patisserie in Ste Foy) more than to be asked a little about the artistry at her fingertips - a local French friend compares it to a the hushed reverence of a high-class jeweller for his wares and thinks that Mme may even be guilty of taking it all a little too seriously - I, of course, couldn’t possibly comment but will admit to quite enjoying the poetry of her descriptive prowess (although the quality of the tarts and ices and pastries and Bordelaise specialities ultimately speak for themselves).

But where the jeu begins to get really serious is at the boucherie. It doesn’t matter here whether you have an extended counter full of meat on display or a bijou shop where all is concealed in an ancient meat safe and needs to be asked for, the bare fact remains that by and large, a French cut of meat is significantly different from that with which I am familiar.

I will confess to being a slightly faithless shopper in the area of the butcher. François Voulgre of the boutique boucherie in the main square at Ste Foy is where I buy my Christmas bird and something for New Year - he has a magnificent Heath Robinson contraption for dispensing string suspended from his ceiling all the better to truss and turn a bird or a gigot d'agneau whose thigh bone has been removed for ease of carving but temporarily and oh so skillfully replaced for better roasting, but his shop is my port of call on high days and holidays only or on market days if I happen to be visiting when he is rushed of his feet. The shop is small and beautifully formed and M Voulgre and I are on nodding and banterous terms these days; we talk mostly about London and his desire to travel there one day and how amusing we English are in needing a little protecting from the face of a bird, for example.

But this year, my heart belongs to the man we affectionately know as Evrard (although his name is in fact Alain). Tall and striking in his one shouldered butcher’s apron, Evrard is our local butcher and has only a slight hint of menace about him. At this point in the post I am in danger of descending into seaside postcard humour if I talk at all about the impressive nature of his knife collection so I shall move swiftly on, but Evrard has turned out to be a bit of a find. Ask him for steaks that you can cook in a moment and that will remain ever so tendre and Evrard will not suggest filet, or chateubriand or other expensive prime cuts that will guarantee tenderness but may fall short on all important flavour, instead his skill and dexterity is turned to something I still cannot name but an unexceptional looking piece of beef is carved lightly and finely into individual portions at a very bon marché price and, back home, hitting the coals it performs beyond all expectations and baffles our English friends who have long since decided that all beef is to be avoided in France outside of Michelin macaronned restaurants or slow cooked stews - they are properly impressed.

Whether it is François or Alain or any of my other bits on the side (incredibly elegant butchers with devoted clienteles in any number of the big towns that surround us that I might happen to be visiting) I have finally hit upon the secret; instead of looking to find or describe my old English faithfuls or attempting to identify a French equivalent, of which there may not even be one, better by far to describe how you are planning to cook a particular type of meat, how you would like it to be once it is done, how many people you are aiming to feed, and then allow the butcher to do his job - offer you the benefit of his knowledge and skill and find what you didn’t even know you were looking for - foolproof!

This trick is not so easily replicated in the grandes surfaces (supermarkets) where you may be faced with polystyrened cling-filmed packages of hard to identify and often deeply unattractive meat (and beware of those marked cheval if you are not inclined to give horse-meat a go) although that is to do a disservice to those where a butcher’s counter exists and there are experts to whom you can turn for advice - be warned, however, levels of patience amongst customers in the ill-formed queues holding paper numbers to indicate their turn at these counters may not equal those on the high street.

“Ah ! qu’il est bon au retour, le foyer,
Et qu’il est doux, le vieux lit de noyer,
Quand on s’y couche, après un long voyage.”
~Poèmes saturniens (1866), Premiers vers, Imité de Catulle

Paul Verlaine

Erica x
(www.acookinthekitchen.co.uk)

Food of the gods

(From Living Within, August)

Entering into the spirit of this sporting season and as small part of the cultural festivities I am dedicating this month’s column to The Olympics and theming my culinary advice accordingly. I will admit to being a little slow each quadrennial to embrace the athleticism of The Games; in past years I have concentrated in the early stages, before my addiction to watching reaches the point at which I could happily spectate at lawn mowing if it were an Olympic sport, on theming the family food in keeping with the host country: lemons and olives featured heavily in 2004 for Athens and noodles and rice for Beijing. It would be unimaginative of me to find nothing appropriate for an Olympic year hosted in London and yet in the face of the recent greyness of the heavens (as I write, the gods of Olympus perhaps still lost on a bus en route to The Village and thus unable just yet to smile down upon us) I am still dreaming of foreign heat-soaked lands in an attempt to enter into the spirit of summer let alone the Olympics.

To ground myself back in our capital city I have carried out a little research into ancient times in an attempt to seek inspiration and connection. Unfortunately, the gods themselves are famous for not eating food, existing as they do on supplies of ambrosia (and I’m not talking creamed rice) and nectar. So bear with me as I give you a little potted, food and sport related, Ancient Greek history; I warn you now, the links are tenuous - this is, I’m told, “squinty scholarship” (where ‘everything can look like something if you just squint hard enough’).

Hippomene et Atalante ~Stefano della Bella, MMOA

In Ancient Greece, the apple (or apple like fruit) was considered a symbol of love. When Atalanta, fleet of foot, much desired but reluctant to be tied down, declared she would only marry a suitor who could beat her in a running race there seemed little chance of anyone winning her hand. Hippomenes, exceptionally keen, decided his best chance lay in tactics. Given three golden apples by his supporter Aphrodite he threw these strategically during the course of his public race with Atalanata and she, unable to resist the heroic feat of attempting to catch them all, failed to outrun him in pursuit of the final apple and lost the contest.

Aphrodite and the ancient greeks would not have been familiar with the tomato but other cultures have labelled this vegetably fruit the “love apple”, perhaps because of its colour or its occasional resemblance to a heart, and on this flimsy hook I am hanging this column and will write, as perhaps I always intended, in praise of the tomato - a London 2012 embodiment of the ancient greek apple and not, as far as I am aware, otherwise sponsored. The tomato should now be performing at its Olympic best, at least anywhere a poly-tunnel has been connected with its training schedule - I cannot answer for the allotment and back-garden disappointments of my near neighbours who laid their chances entirely in the lap of the Team GB weather gods.

We depend upon the tomato to enliven so many dishes. Tinned for convenience or for use out of season it forms an essential element in numerous and diverse sauces. Fresh, even when not in its prime, we use it to help a hamburger or a sandwich go down more easily, but how to get the best out of a tomato? Rose Gray of River Café fame once commented that “a tomato doesn’t taste like a tomato without salt” and I am inclined to agree with this slightly non-sensical statement and would normally add a little grinding of black pepper to my otherwise naked tomatoes too.

Tomatoes in August are so plentiful that we could run out of ideas for them if it were not for the fact that their flavour at this time of year, when they are also happily least expensive, is so good that you could almost live off them. They are at their best when fully ripe - heavy, juicy, sweet with just a touch of acidity. Never store them in the fridge where their flavours will be deadened, keep them at room temperature and allow those that are not purchased fit to burst to ripen in the open air - no sunny window ledge required - they can ripen happily away from the vine given a little time but do your best to choose well in the first place, look for tomatoes grown for flavour rather than looks or ability to withstand rough travel.

The simplest salad can be made from chopped or sliced tomatoes sprinkled with salt and pepper and drizzled with some good olive oil; you could gild the lily by adding some fresh basil or oregano leaves although almost any tender young herb would be good or you could add a few drops of Balsamic vinegar. Once salt has been added tomatoes will begin to give off water and so cannot be left to sit for too long without going a little soggy, but if you have left-over tomato salad it can be cooked gently in a saucepan or in a roasting dish in a moderate oven until the tomatoes begin to break down and meld with the seasonings and oil and used to enhance any number of other dishes - served as a relish/sauce with barbecued meat (Paul at 'The Game Larder’ in Claygate has a BBQ selection second to none at this time of the year) or stirred through some freshly cooked pasta for example.

For use in sauces, tomatoes are often best skinned and relieved of a few of their seeds. Cut a small cross in the bottom of your tomato, plunge into a bowl of scalding water for about 30 seconds or until the skin starts to peel from the cut crosses, take out immediately and refresh in very cold water (to stop the tomatoes from cooking and to make it easier to handle them), cut out the top 'plug’ of tomato core and stem and peel the skin away from the cuts that you made earlier (they should come away with ease). Cut the skinned tomato in half, width-wise, and squeeze or tease the seeds gently out from the middle. The tomatoes are now ready to be chopped and used for a soup or a sauce or for anything where you do not want the skins and seeds to get in the way.

All that remains now is for us to look to whatever gods may have influence at this time of Olympian effort and hope that their countenances are favourable and that we do not displease and that a good time is had by all, even if your tickets are not the ones you wanted and women’s football is really not your thing!

Erica x
(www.acookinthekitchen.co.uk)

“The trumpet soon gave signal for the race
and both of them crouching flashed quickly forth
and skimmed the surface of the sandy course
with flying feet. You might even think those two
could graze the sea with unwet feet and pass
over the ripened heads of standing grain.”

~Ovid, Metamorphoses

Navratan Pullao

What to cook when an extended family is having a bit of a get-together and there are enough vegetarians present to make the idea of a meatless meal seem the most appropriate option? This was the question on my mind last week when the get-together was in my kitchen and the extended family mine by marriage. My choice of menu further coloured by the continued conceit that it is summer in London (in spite of all physical evidence to the contrary) it seemed necessary to sprinkle a little romance over the occasion and imagine a hotter clime where rain might be indicative of welcome seasonal monsoon relief and perhaps even cause for celebration.

Lucky enough to have a father-in-law who is my kindred spirit in his subcontinental kitchen, although thus unfortunately geographically too distant to be present on the day, the centre-piece of my menu was an e-mailed family recipe for navratan pullao - a vegetable based spiced rice dish.

5 bunches spinach (£1) washed and prepared

Of course this necessitated another trip to Southall, my favourite place for sourcing Indian ingredients, my supplies of kala jeera (black cumin seed) needing replenishing and this being all the excuse I need to make a journey.

Shopping for food in a Southall supermarket is a little different from my local Waitrose experience. The customers here, male, female, young, old, know their produce and seem most happy when faced with piles of vegetables that are to be sorted through. Everybody here takes a little time to choose, has a view on quality, freshness and suitability of a particular ingredient for its intended purpose and will wait patiently one behind the other for a turn to pick through the produce, one piece at a time, undisturbed by any impatience on the part of fellow shoppers as they do so.

baby aubergine

I duly waited my turn at the okra coalface while the shopper in front of me picked out her choice of bindi, one lady finger at a time. As she moved onward to the neighbouring karela and finding a bag of ‘chosen’ pieces left atop the pile, she enquired if these were mine. It pained her to know that somebody had taken time and effort to choose these specimens and that they were now dislocated one from the other. I admitted my ignorance of this particular vegetable and our bonding began. She detailed its health giving properties (good for the blood and for those inclined toward diabetes) and proceeded to give me several methods for preparing and cooking it. Always degorged (salted and allowed to release some of its bitterness that can then be rinsed away), sometimes peeled, sometimes chopped, sometimes secretly stuffed, fried or braised, her recipes varied from the almost ready-meal speedy (the ones that allow you to blend pre-ground spices instead of grinding your own masala) to the highly elaborate and time consuming. She remarked that meat is much easier to prepare and how upsetting it can be if her family refuse her vegetarian offerings (unthinkable really when faced with this much love in the preparation, but such is the bitterness of life and karela I guess). She wished me joy in the cooking of the karela that I was now taking care in choosing for myself, looking for none too large but firm and fresh looking specimens that I hoped would not surprise me in due course with fluffily over-ripe seeds, as she took her leave having found the 'few’ things that she needed to stop by this warehouse to buy.

karela, bitter gourd

An overfull shopping trolley later, laden with cauliflower, tindor, curry patta, spinach, coriander, fenugreek leaves, okra, baby aubergine, rice, bread, spices, chickpea flour, bombay onions, long thin beans, corn and so much more, the checkout lady decided that she could not let me pay my bill without double-checking that it was right - the amount looked too much and she needed to be sure there had been no error (I had expected it to be higher). Satisfied that all was well, shopping bagged for me and carefully placed back into my trolley by someone who cared to check that they were stacking it appropriately to avoid squashing or spoiling anything delicate, I was set to plan the rest of my menu.

sack of bombay onions

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FATHER-IN-LAW’S NAVRATAN PULLAO
(Vegetable Rice)

Ingredients:

300g basmati rice,
3 tablespoons vegetable oil,
½ tsp black cumin seeds,
1 medium size onion, skinned and finely sliced,
4 green cardamom pods,
4 cloves,
1 inch cinnamon stick,
2 Bay leaves,
8 whole black peppercorns,
225g (approx) mixed, prepared vegetables (eg cauliflower, beans, peas, corn, carrots, okra, peppers),
salt,
pinch chilli powder,
water.

Method:

• clean the rice thoroughly, soak for 30 minutes in cold water then drain the water and let the rice stand for couple of minutes.


fried onions and whole spices


• heat the oil in a heavy-based saucepan, add cumin seeds and fry for a few seconds then add the sliced onions and fry for 3 - 5 minutes until the onions are golden brown. Add the cardamom pods, cloves, cinnamon stick, Bay leaves and whole peppercorns and continue frying for another few seconds. Add the prepared vegetables, the salt and chilli powder, stir fry for a minute or two then reduce the heat, cover and allow to stew for 5 minutes.


vgetables added


• Add the drained rice to the pan and mix all the vegetables gently; level the rice with a spatula
  
  
  
  and add water to cover the rice by a couple of centimeters, reduce the heat to low, cover the pan and let it cook undisturbed for 20 minutes or until the water is completely absorbed and the grains are separate. Gently fork the rice and vegetables into a serving dish and serve with raitha (or plain yogurt) and chutneys.

---

On the day: rice cooking, other vegetable dishes prepared, bread piled high, Geeta’s chutneys selected, family imminent, weather dubious but promising (we have yet to lose our optimism), I donned my ruby slippers, put some Mehdi Hassan ghazals on to play to honour his life and his passing from it, and hoped for the best from the food and the weather to make us feel a little summery; maybe it was the slippers, but the weather turned out just fine as did the party, and the rice dish? - a definite keeper.

“There’s no place like home” ~ Dorothy, Kansas

Erica x
(www.acookinthekitchen.co.uk)

Southall Sorbet Mango Wallah

(From Living Within, July)

With June hurtling toward July we can be in no doubt that the season is summer, the calendar is clear on this even if our weather has lagged behind it. In the absence of locally provided sunshine I have travelled ‘East’, to Southall, in search of a little exoticism and the delights of the Subcontinental summer mango season.

Southall Broadway represents a London outpost of the Punjab, straddling India and Pakistan, religiously diverse but united here in a celebration of its own culture and of colour, sparkle, entertainment and good food. Streetside vendors of freshly made syrupy orange and yellow jalebis (the highly addictive instant sugar fix) abound no matter what the time of year as do the clothing, slipper and bangle sellers and film and music merchants who line the streets alongside other outlets for food and trinkets and household goods, their shops often turned inside out onto the pavement.

It is a place tailor made to cater for the celebration no matter what kind: births, marriages, religious festivals, life in general - nothing much escapes the desire to offer a friend a box of mithai (sweetmeats) to mark an occasion, and the big names - Royal Sweets and Ambala - and the independents will vie for your custom in these alone. The Broadway seems permanently bedecked and bejewelled, garlanded, perfumed, full of life and ready for a party.

Mango season here is extra special. It comes upon us fast and furious. For this brief moment of high summer the pavement stalls are supplemented by mango sellers with boxes of fragrant fruit piled high in front of them and will be gone again before we know it.

These mangoes, these kings of fruit, come in different sizes, colours, flavours, levels of ripeness, sweetness, names, but the stall holders will guide you in your choice. How sweet would you like them? One teaspoon or two of sugar sweetness in your mango? (or for those with a highly developed palate a one and a half spoon version exists as well), what level of juice are you looking for? how many would you like in the box? (size of mango is important to some).

After some discussion, I plumped for Pakistani Chausna - small, deep orange fleshed, exceptionally juicy, well flavoured and the full two teaspoons sugar content.

Our mango seller sang for us (the honey mango song, tune and lyrics of his own devising I am guessing) offered samples of all the varieties at his feet, and advice on how best to enjoy them too. We were cautioned, as Westerners likely to imbibe alcohol with almost anything it seems in the eyes of those who do not partake, to lay off the hard stuff in the presence of this extreme sweetness - the two will not mix to good effect apparently - and I abstained, out of politeness, from arguing my case for probable sobriety when managing a mango, a task that requires full concentration and has no use for further distraction.

The thing about buying mangoes by the greedy box load though (and the vendors will use all their charm to persuade you to buy multiples) is that there is a danger of running out of capacity to eat them before their aromatic splendour turns into pungent reminder of their presence. For this reason, while you need not shy away from over indulgence in the naked fruit, do have your contingencies ready for preserving a few when you must admit defeat.

Mango flavoured ices are one popular and refreshing way of capturing this very special flavour. Here is my recipe for a mango sorbet in case you should find yourself with a mango surfeit as the short season reaches its July peak. I used about 12 small mangoes, roughly a box and a half.

---

MANGO SORBET

First make a sugar syrup. Put 350g sugar in a heavy based stainless steel saucepan and add 600ml water. Dissolve the sugar over a very low heat stirring gently with a metal spoon - the sugar is fully dissolved when you can no longer see, feel or hear gritty sugar crystals. Raise the heat and allow the syrup to boil for about a minute. Remove from the heat and leave to cool fully (provides about 900ml of syrup - enough for just under 1kg of mango flesh).

Next, remove the mango flesh from the skin and the stone. Imagine the large flat stone centrally located inside the mango and cut the flesh filled sides away from it with a sharp knife (bear in mind that the stone is at least 1cm thick at its widest), scoop the flesh out of these two 'cheeks’ with a small spoon. Pare the skin from the remaining flesh around the stone and cut the flesh away leaving any difficult fibrous bits that cling (anything left on the stone is now officially a cook’s perk to be eaten, unobserved, straight off the stone while leaning over the kitchen sink).

Blend the mango flesh into a smooth purée in a food processor or using a food mill. Put the purée into a measuring jug (or weigh it on a scale).

When the sugar syrup is fully cooled, add an equal volume of syrup to the quantity of mango flesh (if there is 300ml of mango purée, for example, add 300ml of sugar syrup). Mix together and then taste for flavour. Freezing will dull the flavour so it should taste sweeter than you would like at this stage; if you want to sharpen it, add some lemon juice (I added the juice of a whole lemon). You can also add a shot or two of vodka if you don’t mind an alcoholic hit but more to help prevent the sorbet from freezing solid - just don’t say you weren’t warned of the potential consequences if you do so!!

Freeze in an ice cream maker,if you have one, according to its instructions, or in a freezer proof container if you don’t (put it in the freezer and take it out every 30 minutes or so and beat with a fork until you are happy that the ice crystals are evenly distributed and the resulting mixture is as smooth as you want it).

---

“In my opinion, there are only two necessary requirements concerning mangoes. Firstly, they should be sweet and secondly, they should be plentiful!”

~ Mirza Gahlib (Indian poet and mango lover)

Erica x
(www.acookinthekitchen.co.uk)

Cajun & Creole class

The weather was almost deep south soupy; so very almost. There was enough humidity to frizz hair and shine faces (at least it did mine); it was very nearly balmy just this little bit south of Wimbledon where the weather and its forecast will be top priorty in the national news for the next fortnight and where we had been promised real heat. New Orleans BBQ prawn (not strictly BBQ but that just adds to its charm) gumbo, rice, freshly shucked corn and pie with a raised crimped all American crust (pecan, for the record) was on the menu and the perfectionist in me had harboured hopes for a little semitropical verisimilitude, weatherwise, to sit alongside us. While not perfect what we had would certainly do and, I will readily admit, was somewhat more comfortable to cook in than the genuine article would have been.

Here was the venue, set up for the get go

recipe booklets, aprons and newspaper prawn-proof mats in place

We chopped and simmered, sliced and diced, whisked and baked and created lunch; the weather held as we ate our fill around our alfresco table, remourning the loss of Lonesome George the Galapagos tortoise as we did so and revisiting a few other stories of the week that formed our makeshift, newsprint, Lousiana-style table cover, while chatting about the world, each other, the weather (of course) and food. The shrimp went down a messy, finger-lickin’, storm and pecan pie proved never too much for a finale. In all, I hope, an elegant sufficiency.

Hope to see some familiar faces along with some new ones in September when this cook will be back teaching in her kitchen. In the meantime, Cake Lady is in town and will be taking a couple of master classes in cake baking and decorating; a rare chance to obtain her recipes and learn how to make some unique, supremely delicious and very beautiful celebration cakes. Our favourite cyclist of Chiswick Farmers’ Market days - our only customer to make his purchase while still seated on his bike - once memorably held his weekly ‘naked vanilla’ cakeling aloft and declaimed it “the food of the gods”!.

Thank you to today’s class attendees for stopping by - I had a lovely day with 'y'all’.

“Laissez les bons temps roulez!”
(Let the good times roll!)

Erica x
(www.acookinthekitchen.co.uk)

Mango Man

Anissa Helou, Muhammarah and Mastic

Last week I was introduced to Muhammarah (a rich Middle Eastern red pepper dip) by Anissa Helou. Who is Anissa? She is a writer, cook, teacher, stylish woman of mystery and unguessable previous guises with hair that cannot go unmentioned - a dazzling, grown up, sophisticated Crystal Tipps come to life.

Of course, I don’t really know Anissa, I made her acquaintance on Twitter and have gleaned a little knowledge of her from her tweets (@anissahelou) and from her website. I know that she is part Syrian part Lebanese and I know that her twitter stream is full of world matters and lively conversation with friends that gives us, in no more than 140 characters at a time, a glimpse of the more rounded person, one who displays generosity, a sense of fun and one who cares for her fellow man. Occasionally it also gives a link to something she has cooked and some instruction on how to follow in her footsteps and that is where this post becomes relevant.

Last week Muhammarah was on the menu with some mastic flavoured crackers to eat alongside it - I couldn’t wait to get started. I had sourced mastic for Stevie Parle’s Chicken, Mastic & Pomegranate Molasses recipe from his recently published Dock Kitchen Cook Book (Anissa gets a credit here too) and I craved more uses for this spice and so jumped at the chance of using it here.

The recipes delivered on their promise. In my house no one stands on a ceremony of politeness where food is concerned - they consider this cook robust enough to take any criticism or suggestions for improvement that spring to mind - and there was not only universal agreement that this was very good but also full understanding that it would be made again.

Neither recipe is difficult or overly demanding, the crackers took a little time, as yeast leavened recipes always will, but dough is always a pleasure to work with. I used strong plain flour in place of the wholemeal/white flour mixture (no wholemeal in the store cupboard) and I toasted the walnuts a little before grinding them for the muhammarah but otherwise the recipe is exactly as Anissa directed. Here are a few pictures of how progress looked along the way.

little dough balls waiting for rolling

crackers rolled, cut and pricked

muhammarah

et ses biscuits salés (du Mastic de Chios)

Thank you Anissa!

“The transition, therefore, is very easy to mastich, which grows upon another prickly shrub of India and Arabia, known by the name of laina. Of mastich as well there are two different kinds; for in Asia and Greece there is also found a herb which puts forth leaves from the root, and bears a thistly head, resembling an apple, and full of seeds. Upon an incision being made in the upper part of this plant drops distil from it, which can hardly be distinguished from the genuine mastich. There is, again, a third sort, found in Pontus, but more like bitumen than anything else. The most esteemed, however, of all these, is the white mastich of Chios, the price of which is twenty denarii per pound, while the black mastich sells at twelve. It is said that the mastich of Chios exudes from the lentisk in the form of a sort of gum: like frankincense, it is adulterated with resin.”

~Pliny the Elder, Natural History, 12.36

Erica x
(www.acookinthekitchen.co.uk)

Surrey gumbo with a little jazz in its soul

Now I don’t hail from any deeper south than the southern corners of London - the ‘parish’ of Surrey if we’re going to be precise - but that didn’t stop me a week or two back, when we still knew what it was like to feel a little heat and see a little sun, from dreaming some dreams of the Deep South of the US of A and imagining a dish or two with a Southern bent.

With some early well flavoured but swift to deteriorate peaches at my disposal, the wherewithal for a Peach Pie in fact (doesn’t the name alone just make you want to drawl?), I looked for a warm southern precursor to all that peachy sweetness and my gumbo pot beckoned.

It’s harder than you think to tie down a gumbo. Nobody seems to agree on what the word Creole denotes let alone on a definitive recipe for this gem amongst its cuisine. But it seems to me that it derives its basic techniques from the niceties of French classic règles and that a mirepoix is a mirepoix is a holy trinity, even if a French one includes carrots and a Louisiana one sweet peppers,

a 'holy trinity’: onion, celery, peppers (green might be better) with some interloping tomatoes

and a roux is a roux is a roux, although a gumbo roux is a decidedly more mahogany shade than I would normally aim for.

So armed with basic technique, an interest, a bit of research and a recipe that I care for but am prepared to work on, I have reworked my favourite method. Even if the result from a Tokyo born, Surrey bred, never-been-to-Lousisiana-in-my-life cook cannot be said to be truly authentic (those who hail from Louisiana are fiercely protective of authenticity and being prepared within state lines is for some non-negotiable), it tastes pretty darn good to me.

A few substitutions are necessary, you are going to be hard pressed to find an andouille sausage anywhere in the UK for starters, but it is not beyond our wit to find a smoked and spicy Spanish version that has pedigree in that part of the world too or to find another route to a smoky flavour.

some smoky sausage

crispy fried bacon

The result is a deep, nuanced, multi-layered dish, one that takes the idea of slow cooking to a pretty high level if we are just talking time taken to prepare it. A dish that, depending on how you choose to make it, is inclined to dirty up a fair few pans (you could manage with just the one but I prefer to build it layer by distinctly cooked layer) but, as with most things on which you spend a bit of time, the results are worth the effort. Better still, most of those who really know this cuisine seem to acknowledge that this dish just gets better for keeping a day before you serve, so you can be as chilled as the beers if you are eating with a crowd. It doesn’t require dressing up, you can put newsprint on the table instead of a cloth, it is not real 'purdy’ but it is a star all the same.

I am not going to detail the recipe - my mongrel take on a Creole/Cajun classic is not in any way definitive and gumbo recipes for greens or pork, fruits de mer and fowl are widely available for those who want to hunt them down - but for those of you with an interest, here are the ingredients that I used and some signposts for how I treated them and I don’t think this version is too far removed from 'authentic’, whatever that might mean.

fried chicken

a 'mirepoix’, softened, with a few additions

tomatoes added

all ready to simmer in a roux thickened stock

okra

chopped

fried

Mix them all together, allow them a little time to acquaint themselves one with another, old fashioned style, treat them gently and garnish with some herbs and some sweet little onions at the last minute and this dish will reward in full.

a fully garnished gumbo looking about as good as it is able

Serve in a large flat soup bowl with some plain boiled rice and plenty of hot sauce on the side!

“New Orleans Creole cuisine evolved from many sources and it continues to grow. Like jazz, it was not invented; it grew gradually” ~Jerome Fein

Erica x
(www.acookinthekitchen.co.uk)

A Persian Midsummer →

June edtion, page 19.

Midsummer is fast approaching and all things Scandinavian are having a bit of a moment. As we continue to invest in the darker side of the Nordic psyche and in particular its dramatised crime fiction, I have toyed with the idea of writing something here about the manner in which ‘Midsommar’ is celebrated in that northenest part of our northern hemisphere; that place where the longest day is of especial cause for celebration because the opposing night in the calendar six months hence is so depressingly long.

I could have followed this lead, and written of floral abundance, outdoor partying, gravadlax and crayfish, potato and beetroot and of dill and chive flavoured party food, all washed down with a little too much aquavit. I could have pointed out that Williams & Bunkell (aka Matt and Mark, or the fish boys if you prefer), in Claygate Parade, are a local blessing who, quite apart from the wet fish displayed so beautifully in their window, can also provide some pretty spectacular salmon based centrepieces for a Scandinavian themed Midsummer party.

But the cook in me has been seduced, more recently, by a very different part of the world, one that boasts no thrilling whodunnit drama or iconic light fittings, and one that will not be celebrating Midsummer with quite such gay abandon but whose food, nonetheless, is entirely appropriate for entertaining during the warm evenings of the summer months. I am talking of Persian cuisine, a hidden gem, unlike any other you may have tasted. Not quite Middle or Far Eastern, this part of the world hinges those other two Easts together with its unique blend of flavours, techniques and ingredients.

Persia is, of course, a bit of a euphemism - more romantic sounding than the modern name but the time honoured traditions surrounding Persian food are still very much a feature of modern day Iran. The word Persian refers to the wider culture attached to that place, a culture that has been influential on many others even as they have marched in as conquerors, admired its magnificence and submitted to its culinary superiority.

Persia is a place of foodie richness; a vast and often beautiful landscape encompassing mountains and deserts and coastlines and ancient cities and all manner of history and regional custom, but what all Persian households have in common, above the shared tennents of their national cuisine, is an overwhelming generosity of spirit when it comes to looking after a guest or two.

There is no typical progression of courses at the Persian table, they are more inclined to a spread of wide variety. They are fond of fresh herbs and dairy products and their stews and soups and koftas and kookoos offer a subtle balance of hot and cold, sweet and sour and of delicate spicing; bread is always at their table and, on high days and holidays so is their very special rice, plain or jewel studded, but sporting the tah deeg (crust), so prized that many are prepared to use a little guile to obtain a lion’s share. To sweeten the mouth at the end of the meal, desserts like we are used to are not well known, they have instead sumptuous sweetmeats or simple fresh fruit.

We are lucky to have, just along the A3 at the Robin Hood roundabout, Suroor Market, a grocers full of Persian goodies: preserved exotic fruits, herbs, spices and vegetables, fresh flatbread and other produce, nuts and dates and ready made sweetmeats, labneh (thick, strained yogurt), cheese, olives - a veritable Aladdin’s cave of Eastern goodies - and so we have little excuse not to try this cuisine for ourselves if we would like to. You need to know your way around a little, but it is a pleasure to learn and the natives are inclined to be friendly and can tell you all you need to know about their ingredients even if we cannot always understand or agree on a name for some of them.

For those of you not yet au fait with this particular cuisine here is a taster of the kind of herby freshness that the Persians do so well, an early summer version of the kookoo that I mentioned earlier. This is not dissimilar to an Italian omelette except that the Persians verge on the reckless where herbs are concerned; if you choose to add a few ruby red barberries to the mix, the decorative comes to the fore as does that slight sweet/sour zing so beloved of this demographic. A tasty, entry-level, lunch and picnic-friendly example of this majestic cuisine and, aside from a little effort washing and drying all those herbs, very quick and easy to make. I hope that you enjoy it.

---

KOOKOO-YE SABZI
(Herb Omelette)

Ingredients:

1 cup (each) washed dried & chopped fresh parsley and coriander,
¼ cup (each) washed dried & chopped fresh dill and chives,
a few sprigs fresh fenugreek ^*
1 bunch spring onions, sliced,
6 eggs,
salt and pepper,
1 tsp dried barberries (optional),
saffron (optional),
olive oil and/or butter.

^*or 1 tsp dried leaves or ¼ tsp lightly crushed seeds (all optional)

Method:

• if using, soak the barberries in a little water; at the same time lightly crush the saffron and add a couple of teaspoons of cold water, set to one side.
• de-stalk all of the herbs, wash in a large basin of cold water, drain and dry, first in a salad spinner or tea towel, and then roll in a clean dry tea towel to dry the herbs completely. Chop the herbs quite fine and set aside.
• break the eggs into a large bowl and whisk together with some salt and pepper and with the saffron, and its liquid, and fenugreek, if using.
• stir in all the chopped herbs and spring onions and the drained barberries.
• heat a tablespoon or two of oil or a knob of butter over a medium heat in an oven-proof frying pan (no more than 24cm in diameter); the fat is hot enough when a test teaspoon of the mix starts to sizzle in it, pour all of the egg mix into the pan and turn the heat right down.
• cover the pan, cook until the omelette almost set (about 10 - 15 minutes), uncover, and brown the top under a hot grill or by sliding the omelette onto a large plate and putting it back in the pan, top side facing downward.
• cut into wedges and serve once the omelette has cooled a little, or at room temperature, with some bread and some salad.

---

“The cuckoo comes in April, and stays the month of May; sings a song at midsummer, and then goes away.” ~traditional proverb

Erica x
(www.acookinthekitchen.co.uk)

Dropping pancakes with Philip Harben

We were without breakfast in our house this morning - too many sunny days and not enough basic food shopping, so, with two eggs left in the basket, flour in the cupboard and milk and Maple Syrup in the fridge, I thought pancakes might be the order of the day - fat ones, American ones (or are they Scots/Scotch/Drop ones?) the thick round ones anyway. I can keep the recipe for thin batter in my head but, somehow, the proportions for what my mother called ‘drop scones’ won’t stick there - I require the safety net of a recipe.

Baking, unlike other branches of cooking, is more science than art. The proportions of flour to milk to egg to baking powder for these pancakes are really important. Last time I made these, I turned to Skye Gyngell. How I Cook had just been given to me, and there she waxed lyrical about summer pancakes and her daughter Evie’s recipe. The thing about Skye though, beautiful as her books are, I just don’t believe that she tests the recipes and often they seem doomed to failure before we even start. One look at the 250g flour to 500ml (half a litre!) of milk, 3 eggs and 75g butter(!) and I knew that these would be a disaster - the proportions don’t even look right on paper.

Moving onward to Dan Lepard and Short & Sweet, normally so reliable, he was a bit of a let down too. He has asked Betsy for a recipe (350g flour to 225ml milk, a 'little’ butter, and a third egg to Skye’s two) - but the instruction is lacking - “only add the last of the milk if need be” - what does that mean exactly Dan? I need context. I need to know how the batter should look and behave, I need a description of it if I am to know if the last of the milk is 'needed’ - I know it’s a small detail, but it matters - and while Skye’s half litre of milk looked like overkill without enough flour to absorb it, that 225ml, even with the extra egg, is not particularly generous given all that flour. I trusted you last time Dan, but these turned out a little stodgy. I wondered if this recipe can only work if you are Betsy and living with the degree of year round humidity that the Black Isle has to offer - might we in fact need to add more milk rather than holding back those last few drops?.

Clutching at straws with this previous experience behind me, I remembered listening to the very sweet Jo Wheatley on Womans hour last week and that her recipe seemed detailed: wrong again, 1 mug flour to 1 mug milk and three, specifically, large eggs. Now, personally, I have a problem with cup measures and these are exact even if they do add the degree of uncertainty that volume brings with it, but mugs? I have at least three different sizes of mug in my cupboard so this recipe, while appropriately 'homely’ sounding to fit the current zeitgeist, is of no use to anyone who doesn’t know for sure what size mugs Jo’s are, not unless she gives the rest of her ingredients in terms of their relation to the size of a mug anyway.

Beginning to lose hope, I go back to my roots. The first time I ever made these I referred to my mother’s Philip Harben (Cooking - a Penguin handbook). He outlined magic ratios for batter and wrote beautiful prose defining and instructing. Here is what Mr Harben has to say about batter:

“BATTER is made of flour and eggs beaten together with enough liquid to form a pourable creamy fluid (French battre to beat). It can be fried as a thin film (pancakes), baked (batter puddings), or cooked in direct contact with hot greased metal (waffles, drop scones). Or it can be used as a coating for pieces of food to be fried (fritters). Its consistency can vary from very thick, only just pourable, to very thin, almost milky, according to which of the manifold purposes it is to be put.”

Who would put it better or more succinctly today? Unfortunately, I remember well my first attempt using Philip’s proportions. I was very young, it may even have been my maiden voyage in the kitchen, I can still see the two pancakes (yes, just two) that I made from a full quantity of his batter (6oz/170g flour to 5floz/150ml milk and 1 small egg); they were, as you might imagine, rather large. The first was the shape of Africa and almost an inch thick. I had never seen a drop scone before, God alone only knows why I was trying to make them and they were a huge disappointment. Consequently I don’t trust Philip’s proportions even today - he had promised me half a dozen would drop neatly from my spoon.

Finally, I look to Nigella and How to Eat, written before she became a symbol for all that is fast loose and above all glamorous, and I hope for salvation. There it is - ingredients written as proportions variable according the type of batter required and better still they look like they will work - you kind of know it from the start; it sounds right. If you really want to perfect them, Jo’s tip about whipping up the egg whites separately from the yolks and folding them into the batter at the last minute, will fluff these pancakes up a notch as will the Penguin method of:

“beating eggs and sugar until thick and light and then mixing in the other ingredients.”

For my own sake, if not for yours, I am going to record here Nigella’s proportions (amended slightly for sugar and butter by Bee Nilson in The Penguin Cookery Book) and a Philip Harben worded method (again, slightly amended to incorporate additional ingredients) so that next time at least I have a reference point if, once again, I have forgotten what the proportions should be and how the prose for a recipe once sounded. Serve these as you will, with jam, maple syrup, butter - however the mood takes you. Philip makes his recommendations at the end of the recipe and Nigella suggests bacon shards as a potential foil for Maple syrup; I also like them with a little fresh fruit or some that has been gently cooked with a little sugar

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SCOTCH PANCAKES/DROP SCONES

Ingredients:

250g plain flour,
2 tablespoons sugar,
4 teaspoons baking powder^*
2 eggs,
300ml milk,
2 tablespoons melted butter,
a little butter, to grease the pan/hotplate

^*1 tsp bicarbonate of soda + 2½ tsps cream of tartar ≈ 4 tsps baking powder

Method:

• sieve the flour into a bowl, stir in the sugar and the baking-powder and make a 'well’ in the middle of it.
• break your eggs into this hollow space and on to it pour a little of the milk.
• beat these three liquid things together with a small wire whisk or a fork. Try to disturb the surrounding flour as little as possible as you do this; but even so, a certain amount will creep in.
• continue adding more milk little by little, beating well all the time, and gradually allowing the surrounding wall of dry flour to drop into the egg-milk pool in the middle and get beaten in.
• when all the flour is in and you have a thick creamy mixture, give it a jolly good beating to make sure there are no lumps of unmixed flour. It is at this stage that you can do this most effectively: later, when the mixture is much runnier, the lumps can run away from your whip. Whip in the cooled melted butter.
• work in the rest of the milk gradually, whipping the liquid all the time. The consistency of the batter should be such that when a ladelful of it is poured on to the hot greased metal, it does not flow out very far but remains as a fairly thick pool.
• heat the hot plate moderately. Grease the hotplate by rubbing it with greasy paper and on to it drop good tablespoonfuls of batter in neat round pools - as many as the plate will accommodate.
• after 2 or 3 minutes cooking the pancake will be golden brown on the underside and well risen. If it is burnt underneath the plate is too hot. If it is too pale underneath the hotplate is too cool
• flip the pancakes over with a spatula or slice and cook the other sides likewise.
• scotch pancakes should be put between the folds of a clean dry cloth as soon as they are done: that keeps them nice and soft.
• they can be served either toasted, or just as they are still warm, liberally buttered

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“A pancake has been defined^* as ’a pool of batter fried on both sides’.
^*By me”
~ Philip Harben, “Cooking”, Penguin (1960)

Erica x
(www.acookinthekitchen.co.uk)

Rhubarb & Rose Sharbat, a recipe

This Sharbat, made as a bit of an afterthought for a Persian class this week (when the weather forecast predicted that most people would probably not opt for tea or coffee as a welcome drink) has proved to be a surprising hit - a bit of a scene stealer in fact when it only came on as a bit part player.

Before I go any further, I am going to to declare a slight prejudice; I have never much liked diluted, sugared, fruit drinks. In my earliest experience of them, as a mixed infant at Hurst Park County Primary, the squash being diluted (with considerably more water:squash ratio than would have been recommended) was cheap and lurid, and the resulting beverage, served from rainbow hued (but still hideously unattractive) aluminium jugs, left a nasty taste in the mouth (am I showing my age with this confessional?). Anyhow, although this distaste has been tempered with adult experience, the squashes of my youth having been outdistanced somewhat by the slightly more sophisticated cordials of my adulthood, it has never entirely gone away.

While I can now safely say that I genuinely enjoy the occasional elderflower pressé (to give it a fully posh name), for example, I can’t say that I wonder why I ever drink anything else - or to put it another way, slightly sweet summer ‘refreshers’, for want of a better word, don’t typically feature on my 'A’ list, ever. This week, however, a friend who enjoys the occasional tipple and is not inclined to gush as a general rule, remarked that this Sharbat may be the thing that enables her to give up thoughts of alcohol as she contemplates relief (if not reward) in the form of something tall and cool to drink as she sits on her hot commuter carriage after a long day’s work, and yet another declared it “much better than elderflower”.

So, breaking with my (hardly entrenched) habit here of not writing recipes, I have written up this one for whoever wants it. It is especially pretty (for those of you who care about aesthetics) when served with dried rose petals added in as decoration; they plump up and just look better and better the longer that they sit there. For further decorative effect, if you happen to be entertaining and are planning to mix up a jug full, you can always use a spare rhubarb stalk as a kind of swizzle stick to stir it up with (and you can still cook with it afterwards).

For the record, while this sharbat is well known amongst the Persian population, this particular recipe is based on ingredients and proportions given by Greg Malouf in his beautiful travelogue and coffee-table cook book: Saraband.

summer rhubarb getting to know some sugar

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SHARBAT-e REEVAS
(rhubarb & rose sharbat)

Ingredients:

500g rhubarb;
400g sugar;
250ml water;
juice of 1 lime;
2 tablespoons rose water;
a few dried rose-petals, to serve (optional)

Method:

• wash, trim and roughly chop the rhubarb.
• put in a saucepan with the sugar, toss together and leave to get to know each other for an hour or so.
• add the water and stir over a very gentle heat until the sugar has completely dissolved.
• raise the heat and bring to a boil, then lower the heat again and allow to simmer for about 20 minutes
• strain and reserve the syrupy liquid from the rhubarb and put back in the pan; discard the rhubarb.
• add the juice of the lime to the syrup and bring back to a boil, lower the heat a little and simmer for another 10 to 15 minutes until the syrup has thickened slightly.
• allow to cool, stir in the rose water and store in a sterilised bottle or container in the fridge.
• to serve, dilute with water or soda water, add dried rose-petals for decoration and lots of ice.

---

fierce, sharbat guarding chickens (optional)

I have to say, it has proved a bit of a revelation. This unlikely split personality of a fruit/vegetable, otherwise so unappealing as far as I am concerned after the early, truly beautiful, fully pink, forced stems are done, is fantastic in this form. Its bitter, green tinged stalks help create a delicate, pink hued, admittedly slightly girly summer drink that is really very palatable - who knew? But, if you think it could be better still without being too strictly 'Persian’ (to use that name even more euphemistically than I already have been), you could always add a neat shot to the bottom of a chilled flute and top it with a few more pétillant bubbles, if you get my drift, and serve as an apéritif. One way or another, I hope that you enjoy it as much as it turns out I do.

“Then to the Lip of this poor earthen Urn
I leaned, the Secret of my Life to learn:
And Lip to Lip it murmured - "While you live,
Drink! - for, once dead, you never shall return.”“
~ Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam

Erica x
(www.acookinthekitchen.co.uk)

Living Within, May →

Spring Fever, page 19, for those still full of the joys.

Venus di pastis

OK, so I struggled with the title, but bear with me; I actually want to talk about pasta. Not the dried variety that features in an easy mid-week supper but the fresh stuff that you can spend a little time and derive a little satisfaction from making on a wet weekend when outdoors looks decidedly uninviting and you want the comfort of an indoors project - one that, let’s be honest, impresses a little but even better tastes like nothing you can buy ready prepared.

Here is a picture of Venus, Roman goddess of beauty and love, with Mars at her side and Cupid at her feet tethering her leg to her lover’s in a gesture of unity (well, each to his own, I suppose).

“Mars and Venus United by Love”
~ 1570s, Paolo Veronese, on exhibit at MMOA

Beautiful as it is, I am not throwing this piece of artwork in gratuitously - let me explain further. Ravioli while a good starting point for stuffed fresh pasta (they taste great, they look pretty good, and they are easy to make) cease to be a challenge once you have made them once or twice, and with a little fresh dough available it’s particularly satisfying to shape a few tortellini. These pasta dumplings, according to one of many legends, were originally modelled by a smitten peeping tom of an innkeeper on Venus’ belly button; so beautiful did he find it that he attempted to (further) immortalise this feature of the goddess’ anatomy in the medium of pasta dough. Look more closely at that picture, and you may get a feel for what he was aiming at.

But, to be more precise, I was actually thinking of making some tortelloni, the ‘super-sized’ version that would have been inspired if Venus’ divine navel had appeared a little larger through the inkeeper’s keyhole. The distinction is not just one of size though, it is also one of suitable ingredients and serving practice; tortellini are made with a meat based filling and served in a broth while tortelloni are normally meat free and served with a sauce that is a little less liquid.

I am not going to get too bogged down with terminology, however, as there are so many names for so many types of filled pasta shapes - some shared, some differing in name but not by look, some changing by region and available ingredients - that it doesn’t do to worry too much about the intricacies of what we are going to call them or how authentic the combined ingredients used to stuff them might be.

(flour and eggs, the beginnings of pasta dough)

The dough ingredients, as you can see, are very straightforward - easy enough to gather and, if you don’t want to mix by hand, simplicity itself to transform in a food processor, but, what with it being spring and all, my next question was what to put inside my tortelloni this weekend?

My local greengrocer is once again stocking large boxes full of freshly cut herbs, notably, dill and mint. I have been using them in middle-eastern dishes where fresh, strong flavoured herbs are often welcomed, but, having seen (and bought) some fat greeny white fennel bulbs recently, complete with the feathery tops that the supermarkets often misguidedly cut off for our 'convenience’ (or more possibly their own?) and having used both dill and fennel to create the base notes for a one pot pilaf created to use up some leftover roast chicken recently, I remembered just how much I love the taste of aniseed.

(fresh dill, beloved by many cultures, and, incidentally, the most popular flavour for Swedish potato crisps)

The spectrum of plant life that encompasses this particular flavour is pretty varied and many of these are coming into their own again as the spring gets going. In my garden, the tarragon from last year has started to sprout again and I have just planted chervil too. Aniseed can also be provided, more exotically, by star anise, licorice, aniseed … - I’m sure that there’s more, but with aniseed firmly in mind by this point, I had a look to see if anyone else I knew had been thinking along similar lines.

(fennel, softening for a sauce)

After a bit of research, it appears that fennel is a vegetable that divides us - there are some who genuinely don’t seem to like it much. When eaten raw and crunchy in a salad it is certainly heavy on the aniseed and not to everyone’s taste, but, a bit like celery, once cooked the flavour is transformed into something softer and more subtle and I happen to love it. Theo Randall, it seems, shares a taste for it, and in his book Pasta I found a model for my stuffing. He combined fennel with sweet potato and encased it in some ravioli, I decided to make a few minor changes to the basic recipe and give this pairing a go in my tortelloni and I sincerely hope that Venus, if she is still out there, does not mind this further liberty on my part.

(the belly buttons - almost ready for the pot)

I will need to tweak the detail a little more before I am completely happy, but these bambini were not a bad start. Subtly flavoured, not heavy with cheese, and livened up with a sauce that ever so slightly intensified the aniseed with some slow cooked fennel, and frenchified the italian with the addition of a splash or two of pastis, finished with a hit of fresh chilli and some chopped fennel fronds to enliven both the colour and the tastebuds - I thought it worked pretty well. The aniseed does not overwhelm, it is given a little extra sweetness by the potatoes, smoothed at the edges with a delicate addition of gentle creamy cheese, and the chilli gives it a little spark.

(fennel fronds; a garnish)

So here they are, ready to serve, in need only of a sprinkle of Parmesan,

and, with some minor further adjustment anticipated, I am quite happy with my take on Theo’s recipe, not that his needed any improvement - I think he has pasta pretty well covered - but there is no harm in adding a little something to enhance so long as we remember not to try too hard or to take it too far. I will admit to reining myself in from adding dill or tarragon too and spoiling the harmony of the dish by going for aniseed overkill - not a crime of excess, I suspect, that Theo would ever commit (or even contemplate), but that is why he has written a beautiful book on the subject and I am looking to it for his counsel; I know who I trust and I imagine Theo rarely, if ever, gets it wrong.

“… the aniseed trail that draws the hounds of heaven …” ~ Tom Stoppard
Erica x
(www.acookinthekitchen.co.uk)

Spring's First Kiss

If I was in any doubt as to the state or start of Spring a week or so ago, a short sojourn in SW France over Easter has left me pretty sure of its status; Spring has well and truly sprung in this little corner of the world. Wisteria, iris and peony luxuriantly aflower, plum blossom already superseded by the tender green of the trees’ first leaves and the new born lambs resting from their exertions in the fields adjacent to us;

and, in similar vein, the offerings of the local markets are very much those of Spring in its surety. There may be a wide variety of stalls and stallholders to choose from, but the underpinnings of what is on display differ only in the detail - they specialise in what is locally most current and most plentiful.

In this part of France, at this time of year, while the splendid stalks of green chard that have livened up the winter are still in evidence alongside other unsung stars that we have been relying on for the past few months,

we also see, newly arrived: asparagus - the fat, soil-banked, light-deprived, white variety traditionally eaten in this quarter,

the thin sprue so rarely seen in English markets sitting alongside the more usual, to our eyes, fatter green stalks that are beginning to make their presence felt on the UK scene;

tiny artichokes; spinach; pods of peas and broad beans; spring onions; new potatoes; soft young bunches of herbs; fresh garlic - this really is the season for verdancy; the fresh and the green dominate and are bursting with youthful flavour - such a treat now that the winter staples have become a little mono in their tone.

les aillets; garlicky stalks masquerading as the bastard children of leek and spring onion

The market system of France has not undergone the more drastic changes that we have seen in England over the last decades. While the traditions of our larger market towns may have held firm, our local markets have, by and large, been rendered redundant by our habit of using the supermarket and seeking, above all else, convenience in our habits; we are, late in the day, waking up to the fact that we have lost something important when we have lost this local provision. Farmers Markets are attempting to re-build this heritage and habit and I hope that we are learning to use and support our local shops too so that we do not risk losing them in the same way.

It takes a little more time out of our day, perhaps, but it builds relationships and local communities and is so much more gratifying a way to shop - to have experts provide us with great produce, advise us how to use it and help us with the preparation of it - the supermarkets can’t begin to compete on that personal level.

But back to my French choice on a Wednesday morning in early April. There are numerous local towns operating markets on just about every day of the week between them in the particular locale in which we find ourselves. Bergerac seemed a good place to start - because it is beautiful, because its market spreads all around this splendid church,

because it extends, via its lanes and alleyways, into a permanent covered market and to the stalls that appear alongside that and because it happens that one of its market days is Wednesday.

We arrived a little late in the day but managed to come away with enough to keep us going for a day or two. At our last stop not only did we manage to buy everything left that we could possibly need or want but we left with advice on how best our tiny potatoes could be cooked and enjoyed and a few extra garlic cloves and additional herbs and vegetables thrown in to our basket to ensure that we might follow the instruction.

The stalls vary from the all encompassing to the highly specialised; one amongst this latter category comprised an old man, a table, a canopy of sorts, some fresh eggs, a mound of garlic and another of dandelion leaves.

One might ask many questions about this stall one of these being how do you transport a dozen eggs home safely when there are no egg boxes in evidence? The answer lies in this poke of newspaper, expertly folded and twisted and closed with a lid by someone who has done this more than once before.

Another might be (and certainly was for my family) why would you pay hard currency for a bag full of these?

when your back garden looks like this?

The answer to that could be, of course, that once the dandelions have flowered it is too late to harvest the leaves for the purposes of eating, but it is enough for me that someone has already done the job of harvesting and would be grateful for the sale.

You might also ask what to do with a dandelion leaf, in culinary terms? Well, there are a myriad answers to that. We had some, lightly wilted, in a salad dressed with a little balsamic vinegar and we had them baked with potatoes - here is the before,

the after, unfortunately, was hard to photograph as daylight had faded and edf, our electricity supplier, provides ideal conditions for our lumière to be kept low key when we have need to resort to the artificial; but if you can, imagine this dish baked, dusted with a little Parmesan, crisped and made golden under a high heat in its final moments in the oven and then you can perhaps also imagine a little of just how delicious it tasted as an accompaniment to our evening meal.

On Saturday, in need of new supplies, we headed southward to Marmande, which, unlike some of the other big market towns, is pretty much dedicated to produce - no baskets and nicknacks here - this is for those serious about their food.

Famous for its tomatoes in the summer months (they even hold a festival to celebrate their expertise in this area) Marmande hosts a splendid Saturday morning market. The morning was a little damp and cheerless but the market, as always, was buzzing. There was plenty of action going on around the fountain; the youngsters were having fun as we arrived

but by the time we left, an older crowd of hell raisers had arrived and were dominating the space.

What did we find? Well a few early examples of those famous toms for starters

and what will probably be a rare sighting this year of The Vanilla Man

who has little to smile about with news of the disastrous vanilla harvests

and a wealth of other goodies, including these lovely fresh examples.

Finally, with only a couple of days left for our holiday, to Duras,

our most local market town, on Easter Monday morning. The market here is compact compared to the big guns mentioned above although bursting at its seams in high season with all manner of stallholders, but it maintains a steady presence year round.

Our staples on non-market days include: M Evrard, the butcher; Martine at the boulangerie, and Isabelle at the Maison de la Presse who stands in charge of Le SudOuest, a daily digest of the acts and misdemeanours of the locals to which is added a small sprinkling of news from further afield, but it is, perhaps, most important to us for the poetry of its daily weather forecasts (the predictions of which, by dint of proving inaccurate as often as they are the contrary, are always cause for optimism) and for l'éphéméride: the stars, the saints, the sayings of the day which keep us entertained while we breakfast.

My favourites at the market here include those who are regulars no matter what the season: the farmers who take the middle of the covered space and sell fruit and vegetables that have been harvested so recently they have not always had time to give due thought to their appearance, the old lady next to them who sells eggs so fresh that I need to relearn how to manage them for baking purposes, and the Italian chef who had come to this part of France to run a restaurant but who now sells Italian delicacies from his stall that he has mostly made himself.

For lunch after this market we enjoyed a little snack of asparagus roasted with garlic, fresh herbs (bought from the market to plant for the summer season) a few tiny niçoise olives scattered amongst them and all served on yesterday’s toasted bread with a drizzle of olive oil.

And so it is time to bid farewell to La France, farewell to the new born lambs, training to become the great escapologists that their parents have already proved themselves to be,

(they are only supposed to be sitting on the left hand side of this particular fence!)

farewell to the markets and the plum trees, and the vines that are only just showing their very first highly trained shoots; adieu to all this - à la prochaîne fois!

Baiser du Printemps (Spring’s Kiss), by Auguste Moreau

“Au jour de la Sainte-Prudence, s'il fait du vent, le mouton danse” (If it’s windy on St Prudence Day, the silly sheep will dance away): Dicton du jour, SudOuest, 6 avril 2012, le 97ème  jour de l'année.

Erica x
(www.acookinthekitchen.co.uk)