Mixing

The thought of mixing can make the heart sink or lift depending on the skills of the mixer. Pineapple and cottage cheese; potato salad and hard boiled egg; clotted cream and fudge; the thought of all of these, you might think surprisingly, at best cause indifference and, at worst, repel me. But other mixes interest me enormously. Baking meat into pastry. Scraping the residue of a tomato salad - chopped onion, tomato pips, olive oil and the tomatoey juices - into a saucepan of just drained pasta or into gazpacho.

21st birthday party

My mother's Christmas Book is not merely about Christmas but includes accounts of other celebrations. The first of these in the volume is my 21st birthday party, held on 5 April 1992 for 42 people. My mother records the menu as follows:

Vichyssoise with croutons.
Salmon (cold, baked in foil - Delia Smith). 1 x 7 1/2 lb, 1 x 8 1/2 lbs (3/4 salmon left over).
1 6 lb topside beef roasted medium rare.
12 tiny poussins (roasted with olive oil & herbs).
Avocado salad 15 avocados - not enough! need 20)
Tomato salad (4 lb beef tomatoes - could have been 5!)
Green salad (1 x frisée, 1 iceberg, 2 bunches watercress - too much!)
Baked potatoes.
Orange & lemon charlotte x 4 in big metal bowl.
Green fruit salad -  Prue Leith - apple, grape, grapefruit & kiwi x 4. Made sorbet with leftovers!
27 bottles Champagne (special offer Sainsbury's extra dry!)
50 side plates, soup bowls, dinner plates, soup spoons hired from King's College Hospital.
Big bowls x 2, flat dishes x 4, knives, forks, spoons, glass pudding bowls borrowed off a friend.

I recall the embarrassment of having Happy Birthday sung to me, two speeches delivered in my honour, a poor speech in reply and my mother catching one of the waitresses hired for the day merrily chopping the avocados into the salad with their skins on. It was a good day.

Another version of pumpkin soup

There is a reference to pumpkin soup in a list of my mother's which I discovered at random. She also refers to spiced pumpkin soup in her account of Christmas 1990. Here, in her book of recipes, is what I think she was referring to:

"1 young and soft skinned small pumpkin, peeled & cubed (scrape off coarse fibres in middle).
1 large onion.
2 spring onions & greens.
1 level teaspoon curry powder.
2 beef stock cubes.
1 large can chopped tomatoes.
Olive oil/butter.

Fry chopped onions & pumpkin in butter/olive oil gently. Sprinkle on curry powder & fry until curry powder cooked through. Add tomatoes & stock cubes & 1/2 pint water. Simmer until pumpkin soft. Liquidise & add water until right consistency. Salt/freshly ground black pepper to taste."

Family stories: another list

The companion volume to Alexander's Roots is a book of family stories for children. Some of them are apocryphal, including a splendid story about an evil old aunt who provides "very healthy food" consisting of things like "very plain pasta with pallid slimy mushrooms" or "a pile of Barlotti beans, boiled until they were mushy and served with small pieces of stringy chicken, all skin and bones, and some soggy onion. None of the food was ever browned or caramelised or crisp: it was always colourless: even the salads were made with pale, blanched chicory with a bitter taste...For pudding there were always under ripe bananas, already peeled and cut into chunks." The children, we are told, "hated all this pale tasteless food and longed for savoury grilled and roasted meat, savoury salami, fragrant orange fleshed melons and black grapes with a bloom on their skins and melting figs and juicy peaches with furry skins". Worst of all, this woman beats children with a wooden spoon. Towards the end of the story is a wonderful description of lunch for eight hungry children:

"After what seemed a very long time, Giacomo and Uncle Orlando returned to the dining room. Giacoma was bearing an enormous dish of food. There were tiny artichokes preserved in oil, pink prawns, grilled aubergines with black marks from the grillade, shining red tomatoes, brilliant red peppers, mozzarella balls with herbs, eggs halved and stuffed with anchovies, Barlotti beans livened with tuna, roasted green peppers drizzled with olive oil, potato salad and many other delicious morsels. "Enjoy your antipasti, my children," said Uncle Orlando Norsa. "There will be some properly succulent pasta to follow, and then grilled veal cutlets with fried potatoes. And there will also be some changes round here. From now on your mother will take her meals alone in her bedroom until she is feeling better."

Fried spaghetti

First, as Mrs Beeton never said, make your Bolognese sauce. Now I am aware that any Italian reading this would be appalled at the idea of having it with spaghetti. Linguini or tagliatelle will do equally well. But I am not going to be over-precious about this. Here is what to do with the leftovers. Simply mix together the remaining pasta and sauce and put them into a hot frying pan with olive oil. It requires a little care not to allow this to burn since, if the sauce has been made properly, there is very little liquid. Then serve. A meal best served for one as a late breakfast or early lunch - and it goes surprisingly well with lime pickle.

Marinated lamb with potato salad

My personal recipe book contains a number of newspaper clippings: recipes that I like the sound of but have rarely (if ever) got round to testing. Here is one such cutting, attributed to Ruth Quinlan.

Serves 6.

Ingredients:

2 whole fillets or 6 steaks lamb
4 cloves garlic
4 twigs rosemary
1 tbsp. ground black pepper
1 kg new potatoes
200 g green beans
1 tbsp capers
2 tsp paprika
1 lemon (juice and zest)
150 ml olive oil

Method:

Chop the garlic and rosemary leaves and mix with the pepper and enough oil to coat the meat. Leave in a cool place for at least six hours or overnight. Boil the potatoes and the beans. While still hot, break the potatoes in half using your finger and toss with the rest of the ingredients. When the barbecue is red-hot, sprinkle salt on the meat and cook the steaks for eight minutes and the fillet for 15 - 20 minutes. Rest the meat in a warm place for ten minutes. Serve with the warm potato salad. If you are using fillet, slice thickly. In case of rain, grill (full power) or roast (220 degrees C/mark 7) the meat. The same cooking times apply.

Flageolets with chorizo

This is similar to bacon casserole with flageolets minus the tinned tomatoes.

Ingredients:
3 or 4 cooking chorizo, chopped roughly
1 medium onion chopped finely
1 stick celery chopped finely
2 carrots chopped finely

1 tin of flageolet beans, drained and rinsed
1 teaspoon thyme
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 glass white wine

Gently heat the olive oil then turn up the heat, add the chorizo and fry until well cooked. Add the onion, turn down the heat and allow the onion to soften without burning. Add the celery, the carrot and the beans and continue to cook without adding any water but making sure the contents do not burn. Allow to simmer for half an hour (adding a little white wine if contents in danger of drying out) and serve.

Salade Lyonnaise

Warm salads, counter-intuitive though they are, are a favourite. This is a recipe from "Good Food" for Salade Lyonnaise.

Ingredients

2 tbsp olive oil

Pack of lardons (see tip)

1 garlic clove, smashed once

175g piece crustless white bread, cubed

1 small head of frisée

Method

Heat 1 tbsp of oil in a large frying pan, then add the bacon and garlic. Sizzle for about 15 mins until the bacon is crisp and brown, then scoop it out with a slotted spoon into a bowl, leaving the garlic and bacon fat in the pan. Throw the bread into the pan and toss in the bacon fat, adding the remaining oil if the pan is dry. Fry the croutons for 5 mins on a low heat, tossing occasionally until golden and crisp, then remove pan from heat.

While the croutons are frying, make the dressing. Whisk the chopped shallot, vinegar, mustard and 1 tbsp water in a small bowl. add the oil gradually to make a thick dressing, season, then set aside. Cut away and keep the lighter lettuce leaves and wash if needed, discarding any of the tough outer leaves.

When all of your ingredients are ready, bring a pan of water to a gentle boil and add the vinegar. Crack the eggs into small bowls then gently lower into the water and poach for 3 mins exactly. Line a plate with kitchen paper and use a slotted spoon to lift the eggs onto the plate.

Tip most of the croutons, lardons, all the leaves and two-thirds of the dressing into a salad bowl and toss well. Pile the salad high into the middle of two plates and arrange the remaining croutons and lardons around the side of the plates with the shallot rings. Drizzle the rest of the dressing around the outside and, just before serving, top each plate of salad with an egg, then season it.

I also like this with melting pieces of foie gras...and duck breast...but not sweetcorn. I am not over-enthusiastic about the version with chicken gizzards.

Hot lardons and melting mouthfuls of foie gras. The salad should be frisée. There should be croutons as well.

Vinaigrette

This is not a copy of a recipe, but my memory of some instructions given to an interviewer of Raymond Blanc in a Sunday magazine. Its importance lies not in the ingredients, which are standard, but the method.

Put a teaspoon of Dijon mustard into a mug. Add some sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. Then add olive oil, as though you were making mayonnaise, slowly at first and then a little more quickly, stirring vigorously, until you have a mixture so thick you could turn the mug upside down. Then add about a teaspoon of vinegar.

The advantage of doing it this way is that you have an uncurdled vinaigrette which coats every leaf beautifully.

Roasted peppers stuffed with fennel

Another recipe taken from Granny's red file. Never sampled by me but similar to one of Delia Smith's in her "Summer Cooking" and from the list of ingredients, it looks to me as though you can't really go wrong. I don't know who is responsible for the illustration which appears on the same page as the recipe itself.

Serves 4 to 6 people as a first course.

4 large red (or green) peppers.
2 small bulbs fennel.
1 x 14 oz tin chopped tomatoes.
1 teaspoon mixed pepper berries. (I surmise that these are peppercorns).
1/4 teaspoon whole coriander seeds.
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds.
8 dessert spoons good quality olive oil.
The juice of 1/2 lemon.
Rock salt.

Pre-heat oven to gas mark 4.

Slice each pepper in half lengthways, cutting right through the green stalk end and leaving it intact. Remove seeds. Place pepper halves on the baking sheet, then divide the tomatoes into eight portions, placing each portion inside a pepper half. Pare off any brownish bits of fennel and cut the bulbs first into quarters and then again into eights, carefully keeping the layers attached at the root ends. Put them into a saucepan with a little salt, pour boiling water on them and blanch them for 5 minutes. Then drain them in a colander and arrange two slices in each pepper half. Sprinkle olive oil over each one. Lightly crush the pepper berries and seeds with a rolling pin and sprinkle them evenly over the peppers; finish off with a grinding of rock salt. Bake for approximately 1 hour on a high shelf in the oven. Then sprinkle them with lemon juice, cool and serve. If you want to make them ahead of time cover with cling film but do not refrigerate as the flavour will be spoiled.

Mozzarella and tomato

Tricolore requires red, white and green: it does not, however, require avocado but basil. Then olive oil, sea salt and pepper. And no vinegar.

Salad dressing

Sequels written by somebody other than the original author lend themselves to the prospect of savage criticism by disappointed readers. The Bond books are a case in point. I have rather enjoyed the tradition of writers renowned for their own creations - Kingsley Amis, for example - continuing where Ian Fleming left off. It is particularly pleasing when such writers clearly know their original material so well that they do not merely repeat it but take it further.

In Fleming's "Moonraker", we learn that James Bond takes his own "mustardy" salad dressing to the secret service canteen for lunch. More exotically, in William Boyd's "Solo", Bond even insists on his own version in "the best steak restaurant in Washington" where he is brought a small lacquered tray with "all the ingredients necessary to make a vinaigrette to his own secret formula": these last two words a stock phrase beautifully pinched, no doubt with relish, from the archetypal spy novel. The ingredients are set out in the novel as follows:

a little carafe of olive oil;
a little carafe of red-wine vingegar;
a jar of Dijon mustard;
a halved-clove of garlic;
a black-pepper grinder;
a ramekin of granulated sugar;
a bowl;
A teaspoon; and
a small balloon whisk to mix the ingredients together.









The method for the authentic-sounding recipe is revealed in the only footnote in the entire novel:

"Mix five parts of red-wine vinegar with one part extra-virgin olive oil. The vinegar overload is essential. Add a halved clove of garlic, half a teaspoon of Dijon mustard, a good grind of black pepper and a teaspoon of white granulated sugar. Mix well, remove the garlic and dress the salad.”

We are told that Bond ended his meal with "half an avocado into which he poured what remained of his dressing". I must at some point try a similar demand in a restaurant.

Mayonnaise

I am told that I would make this when a small child: what I did not know was that, far from stirring olive oil into egg yolks, I was stirring tap water into custard powder. My mother would then dispose of my effort having made her own in stealth but I would receive the congratulation for having made it.

On another occasion when I was old enough to make "real" mayonnaise, I produced a post-Christmas supper for my parents: cold turkey, potato salad and dressed salad. My mother took one mouthful of salad and recoiled in horror. I had mistaken cherry brandy for wine vinegar and the salad was thus a disgusting sweet concoction. My mother thought I had done it deliberately. My father was more sympathetic.

Ingredients for real mayonnaise:

2 egg yolks
1/2 pint of Extra Virgin Olive oil OR combination of olive oil and sunflower or rapeseed oil
Tablespoon lemon juice or wine vinegar
Rock salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Method

Ideally using a pestle and mortar, slowly beat the oil into the egg yolks, drop by drop to begin with, then, as it thickens, teaspoon by teaspoon. You will see after a while that when you add each amount of oil, the mixture floats on it for a period of time. Once it ceases to float, it is properly mixed and it is time to ad the next amount. If you dare, you can then let the remaining olive oil trickle in straight from the mug. Then add the lemon juice/vinegar (which will thin the mayonnaise), the salt and the black pepper.

If the mixture curdles, don't worry, provided you have a fresh egg yolk. Simply add the curdled mixture to the new egg yolk as slowly as you would add the oil.

Mixed with a little cream (which, like the lemon juice/vinegar thins it), this makes a sublime potato salad.

Griddle

There are some cooking implements which become venerable and my griddle pan is one. It came from a shop called Aladdin's Cave in Catford where I bought the contents of my kitchen. Besides the griddle, I found a red engine oil can which, for a while, served as an olive oil dispenser.

The griddle itself was square, made of cast iron, with a wooden handle. Now it is coated with the residue of many meals. Probably I have used it most often to make a Nigel Slater recipe: chicken thighs with balsamic vinegar and lemon juice.

Ingredients:
4 fat chicken thighs, skin on
Olive oil
Sea salt
One lemon, juiced
About 4 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

Rub the chicken thighs with olive oil and salt. Get the griddle pan really hot and slap the thighs on, skin side down, so they stick to the ridges of the griddle pan. Leave them to smoke and resist the temptation to keep turning them. After about five minutes, turn. The object is for them to be golden brown, particularly on the skin side. When they are cooked, pour over the lemon juice and balsamic vinegar. There will be smoke, even, possibly, flames if the oil catches, followed by furious bubbling. Turn off the heat and the sauce will continue to reduce. Eat.

I once cooked this in a dressing gown which caught fire at the final stage. I live to tell the tale.

Tom's salad dressing

Sent to me in a text and worth publishing without amendment:

"Just discovered the most delicious salad dressing: liquidise olive oil, red wine vinegar, Dijon mustard and raw garlic. Utterly amazing."

La Tielle de Sète

I have written or thought about writing about Sète before: it is where I had one of the best burgers in my life, at the railway station.

More gastronomically, perhaps, I turn to one of its local specialities - La Tielle de Sète. A kind of orange pastry, looking like a crab, and filled with octopus and tomato. My father reminded me of them the other day when he sent a postcard from nearby - we have been going to Sète since the 1980s - with a photograph of half a dozen and a recipe for the same. He had written "Yuk (I think)" on the back. My father does not like octopus.

I cannot find an English translation of "Tielle", only references to this dish - more commonly named La Tielle Sétoise - with the accent changed from a grave to an acute. There is probably a linguistic term for that but this is a piece about food. I also learn that Tielle is based on the Italian Tiella di Gaeta, Tiella meaning "pan" and the whole dish being prepared like a "pocket sandwich", whatever that might be. They look a little like pockets, I suppose, so that is what I shall call them. Sétoise, incidentally, I perceive as a sauce with tomatoes, chilli and onion: orange-looking, exactly like these "tielles" in fact.

Here is the wording on the original postcard, followed by my attempt at a translation.

La Tielle de Sète

(Pour 6 personnes)

Prendre 1 kg de poulpes, les nettoyer et les plonger dans un court bouillon. Faire blondir 200 g d'oignons dans un peu d'huile avec 2 gousses d'ail, 1 brin de persil et du concentré de tomates, ajouter du vin blanc, du sel, du poivre.


Faire cuire quelques minutes. Puis ajouter les poulpes apres les avoir coupés, du laurier, un peu de piment et laisser cuire 20 mn.

Pendant ce temps préparer une pâte à pain avec 1 kg de farine, de l'eau et de la levure. Mettre la pâte dans une moule, garni avec la farce et recouvrir du reste de pâte en formant un couvercle en le soudant avec de l'eau bien hermétiquement. Badigeonner d'huile et laisser cuire 15 mn à 20 mn thermostat 7°.

POCKETS FROM SÈTE

(Serves 6)

Take one kilo of octopus, clean and immerse in a "court bouillon". Sauté 200 g of onions in a little oil with two cloves of garlic, one sprig of parsley and some tomato purée; add white wine, salt and pepper.

Cook for a few minutes. Then add the octopus having cut it, with bay leaf and a sprinkle of pepper and cook for twenty minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare a bread dough with one kilo of flour, water and yeast. Put the dough in a pan, top with the octopus mixture and cover with the remaining dough, forming a cover by sealing with water.

Brush with oil and cook for fifteen to twenty minutes at gas mark 7.

Sea bream

Buried under cubes of ice in a polystyrene box, looking mournful, he was about to be my lunch. "Dorade", the waiter told us. The disappointing taramasalata beforehand was fortunately not a precursor. Crispy skin, white meaty flesh and boiled potatoes, beans and carrots which I dressed with olive oil, lemon juice and salt. I ate him peering at faint mountains across the Aegean. The little black cat that came to join our table was treated to a little chopped Calamari and the remains of the Taramasalata.

Shepherd's Pie

At the outset, I accept that this is not Shepherd's Pie in that it is made with beef rather than lamb AND I cook it from raw mince rather than use the remains of the joint, which is something I rarely have anyway. But I dislike the "correct" term for this dish, Cottage Pie, which conjures up thoughts of school dinners. In any event, it seems to me slightly more attractive to think that the shepherds would not eat their own lambs...



My version is based on the splendid Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's version in his River Cottage Meat Book...though I am not convinced that he would acknowledge his offspring.



Ingredients for "an enormous Shepherd's pie".

500 g minced beef.
A splash of olive oil.
2 onions, chopped.
2 carrots, finely chopped.
3 sticks of celery, finely chopped.
1 leek, finely chopped.
1/2 pint stock.
1/2 glass red wine.
1 tablespoon or dollop of tomato ketchup (I am keen on Tiptrees although I accept there is nothing wrong with the ingredients in Heinz).
Two dashes of Worcester Sauce.
About a kilo of mashed potato - mashed with butter and milk.
Salt.
Freshly ground black pepper.



Method:

I suggest you use a frying pan to fry the mince, a large saucepan to boil the potatoes and a larger saucepan for everything else including, later, the mince. You'll also need a suitable pie dish. Plus a potato peeler, a sharp knife (I recommend a serrated kitchen devil), a chopping board, a wooden spoon and a colander. It's worth laying out all the ingredients and utensils in advance.

Ok. Heat the oil in the largest saucepan and add the chopped onion. Allow the onion to cook very gently. Unlike HFW, I recommend against allowing it to brown. One step nearer to bitterness. Next, add the carrot and the leek. Keep going, very gently, stirring every so often.

Now, fry the mince on a relatively high heat, encouraging it not to steam or to burn but to brown. When it's cooked through, add it to the vegetables and mix everything together thoroughly. Add the ketchup and the Worcester sauce, followed by the wine and the stock, in swift succession. Again, mix it all together well. Turn the heat to its lowest setting and let the whole thing cook for around half an hour although it is forgiving and will allow you longer. Taste, add salt and pepper if needed and additional Worcester sauce and ketchup, if needed. But this is not a tomato based sauce. It is the mince and vegetables that should sing. You can also add a little water or wine if it's in danger of drying up...but you don't want excessive amounts of liquid. Think casserole rather than soup. Stir every so often.

While things are cooking, peel, chop and boil the potatoes. Mash them with butter and milk: not too much though.

Once the mince and vegetables are cooked, tip them from the saucepan into a pie dish. Then put the mashed potato on top. Several dollops plonked unceremoniously on to different parts of the pie dish...and then spread it as evenly as you can without being precious about it. Use a fork to make patterns which will brown nicely. Don't worry if the gravy at any point slops on to the potato. I think the reason this is intuitively displeasing is because it feels like planting muddy footprints on to a virgin field of snow. Once again, this dish is very forgiving. Spilt gravy will simply cause the potato to brown better. But do try to seal the edges.

If you're wanting to eat this in about half an hour, put it straight into a pre heated oven at about 200 degrees and cook for around twenty five minutes. Or, if you want to eat it later, say the next day, put it into the fridge. It will then take about 40 - 45 minutes to cook from cold. Keep an eye on it while it's in the oven. You are aiming for golden brown rather than burnt brown. When you take it out of the oven, it should be bubbling up at the sides however well you sealed it and this is a good thing. Eat.

Bolst's mango pickle goes particularly well with this as does lemon pickle. Others like Worcester sauce, ketchup, mustard or other things. My view is that in the case of Shepherd's pie, it's particularly important to cater for everyone's different tastes, condiment wise. The following idea comes from Nigel Slater. Put all relevant jars and bottles on the table including those rather suspect jars with wax paper containing mustard with honey or chilli jam that someone gave you as a present ages ago. Someone else will love it.

Catalan breakfast

Whether this is an authentic term for what you see below I do not know: but it is what I use. The components are light pieces of toast, olive oil, tomatoes well-salted and peppered and Serrano ham. You squash the tomatoes into the oil with the toast and then alternate between eating tomato, ham on the toast - or even both. It is a good plan to leave enough toast at the end to mop up the juices at the end...or make more toast.



Mushrooms on toast

I was once contemplating making this for a late evening meal when Granny rang. I told her, rather smugly, of my plan for supper and she was most impressed. Whether I then made it that evening I am not sure.

It is based on a Nigel Slater idea in "Fast Food" - although I suspect he would be the first to deny that it is a recipe.

INGREDIENTS:

Sliced mushrooms

Finely chopped onion

Olive oil - for frying

Double cream

Some fresh parsley

Possibly a scrap of bacon

Toast

METHOD:

Heat the oil and gently fry the onions. Add the mushrooms; I think they should be slightly crisp. Add the bacon if you're adding it. Then the cream and let it all bubble and reduce. Pour on to the toast and eat immediately.