Mashed potato

It is odd how something so simple can on occasions be so utterly revolting. Take Smash: dried mashed potato in a packet. The most successful advertising I've ever experienced, judging by the distance between the advert and reality. The description of the carefully selected, beautifully peeled and prepared potato... What on earth was my mother thinking of when she bought it? Perhaps I inveigled her. The finished result was utterly lacking in flavour, texture or integrity.

Another thought that occurs to me, this time in relation to school mashed potato. How was it that it was so nasty yet in different ways depending on the day it was served? And how could the powers that be have decreed that it ever be served with salad (Monday lunches)?

Here is how to make mashed potato that sings. Peel, chop into small pieces and boil your potatoes. Meanwhile, cut a small onion as finely as you can. When the potatoes are cooked, drain them, then throw in the onion, a large lump of unsalted butter, a glug of double cream, some salt crystals and freshly ground black pepper and mash away furiously. I use a potato ricer.

As you'll have gathered, this is not one of those recipes where precision in terms of quantities is required. What is necessary is thorough mashing and heat.

A final observation. "Mustard mash" is something you often now find in the kind of pub that serves lamb shank. It is my theory that potatoes and mustard do not go together. However, I have no difficulty with a dab of mustard on the side to go with the sausages that so often accompany mash: though it was only in the "Dandy" that they were ever stuck into the mash, as a feast for Tom Tum or Greedy Pigg.

Shreds of cabbage

A simple New Year recipe. As with pork, the Chinese know instinctively how to cook cabbage. By removing rather than adding water.

Ingredients:
1/2 a white cabbage, shredded
1/2 a small onion, finely chopped
A splash of olive oil
A dash of soy sauce

Heat the oil in a saucepan and add the soy sauce. Then add the onion and fry gently. Then the cabbage. Stir constantly. Eventually, the cabbage will cook in its own steam but you have to be careful not to let this burn. Takes about 20 minutes.

Gravlax

This recipe comes from my mother's own recipe book. It was two years ago to the day that she died and this was one of the things she would always make at Christmastime when "Turn the gravlax!" became a twice-daily used expression, whether as a command or an intention.

Since then, making the Christmas Gravlax has been my brother Will's task. The photograph is of a plate of his, from Christmas just past.

I think it must have been Lotta, the family au pair and still dear friend, from Sweden, who stayed with us in 1982 - 1983, who introduced her and us to it. Sometimes I see it in recipe books written as "Gravadlax", sometimes as "Gravlax". Mum's recipe, then, exactly as she wrote it down, but whether this is from her head or copied from a Swedish recipe book, I am not sure. The last line (plainly her own view) was clearly added much later.

2 1/2 lb salmon trout,
20 peppercorns,
6 tablespoons salt,
4 tablespoons sugar,
2 oz dill leaves (chopped) (fresh if poss).

For sauce:
3 tablespoons French mustard,
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar,
3 tablespoons oil,
salt, pepper and sugar to taste,
3 tabespoons finely chopped dill leaves.

Split fish in two and bone. Crush pepper corns, mix with salt, sugar and dill. Sprinkle third into dish. Lay on a fillet of fish, skin side down; spread another third of dry marinade, cover with remaining fillet skin side up and pack remaining marinade over and around. Cover with cling film and weight. Leave in fridge or cool place for 36 - 48 hours turning every 12 hours. Will keep one week in fridge.

When fish has completed marinating, will be surrounded by liquid. Drain fish and scrape any solids left from marinade away. Cut horinzontally into wafer thin slices. Fold into pretty curves on serving dish. Serve with rye bread, lemon wedges and mustard and dill sauce.

Don't bother about peppercorns or sauce! Serve with lemon segments.

Raw chicken

Steak tartare is one thing. This is one of the few memories that still makes me shudder.

It happened on a train quite a few years ago. My mother and I had decided to get a picnic at M & S for the journey and had found all sorts of good things. Making the mistake of shopping when we were hungry, we bought far too much: little samosas, lamb koftas, sun-blush tomatoes, among other things. And some appetising-looking chicken pieces, in breadcrumbs. We probably had in mind a rather delicious version made by my godmother, Hilary, which she used to make for an annual picnic at Hever Castle. Another story. Back to the train. We must have bitten into our own chicken pieces simultaneously...and then looked at each other. The insides were raw. In fairness to those who had sold it, the package (which we had not read in our haste to buy before our train left and then eat) made it very clear that the chicken pieces needed cooking first. Before then, I had always regarded the expression "stomach-churning" with suspicion. No longer.

Nursery food

The occasion was a family summit, a summit to discuss my grandmother's fast progressing Alzheimer's. There had been a meeting in Henley, where she then lived. While the adults talked, the four cousins window-shopped in town.

After the serious business, whatever it was, had been transacted, the adults and children regrouped and headed to my uncle and aunt's house - Hereward Cottage in Chalfont-St-Giles - for lunch. My aunt Lynda was not there but had left us a large and delicious lasagna to eat.

It was some words of Alex as he served us that have stuck in my mind: "Apologies", he said, "that it's nursery food." No one, of course, accepted the apology (a chorus of "Nonsense" etc) and I don't think anyone was merely being polite. After all, what could have been more comforting and warming than a plate of lasagna after (for the adults) a rather gloomy morning of seriousness?

But something else occurs to me many years later, probably at about the age Alex was then. His comment was certainly not meant to make the children present feel more childish. Instead, Alex was, probably entirely subconsciously, reminding himself and his sisters that once upon a time they had all been used to eating "nursery food", in a nursery, in Henley, cooked by their mother, my grandmother.

Ethiopian restaurant

The restaurant Philip introduced me to about twelve years ago lay somewhere in the outer reaches of King's Cross. It was on a grim arcade of shops. This start, so unpromising, should have been the precursor of an extraordinarily good meal, the talk of smug dinner parties to come. Instead, it was one of the worst meals I have ever eaten.

Let me try to recapture it. Spread out over our plates like damp carpet underlay, flavourless bread, grain unknown. That was the only thing worth eating on the table. There followed bowl upon bowl of nondescript sludge: vegetable matter so overcooked that it was impossible to tell what it had once been, to distinguish one dish from another or even, I confess, to determine whether certain dishes were animal, vegetable or mineral. Nothing tasty. Just a general sense of suspicious flavours, wetness and nastiness.

The conversation, on the other hand, was lively. Philip tells the story of how one of his dining companions, choking with rage, but still wishing to keep to the rules of dining propriety, hissed at him: "What is this degrading filth?"

Rosemary bread

A sliced baguette. Rosemary from the front garden. Olive oil. Salt. And in the oven. Dedicated to Granny.