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.

Bouillabaisse

I have two favourite literary accounts of the dish.

First, from the neglected children's book, Street Fair in such two American children, John and Anna, accidentally end up having to fend for themselves in the Riviera:

"The plates were full of mustard-coloured soup, and islands of various shapes rose out of the soup.

The first thing she took out of the soup was a kind of fish, and the next thing was another kind of fish, and the next thing was a tiny clam still in its blue shell.

'Would you say it was soup with fish, or fish with soup?'"

James Bond travels to Marseilles in On Her Majesty's Secret Service and asks his driver about the famous soup:

"Bond said, 'Now tell me, is the bouillabaisse chez Guido always as good?'

'It is passable,' said Marius. 'But this is a dish that is dead, gone. There is no more true bouillabaisse, because there is no more fish in the Mediterranean. For the bouillabaisse, you must have the rascasse, the tender flesh of the scorpion fish. Today they just use hunks of morue. The saffron and the garlic, they are always the same. But you could eat pieces of a woman soaked in those and it would be good. Go to any of the little places down by the harbour. Eat the plat du jour and drink the vin du Cassis that they give you. It will fill your stomach as well as it fills the fishermen's. The toilette will be filthy. What does that matter? You are a man. You can walk up the Canebiere and do it at the Noailles for nothing after lunch.'"

The first time I heard of Bouillabaisse was when my mother described it and said that fishermen had a regular prank they played on guests which was to put an excessive amount of salt into a ladleful of the soup and solemnly pass it round. The guests would be too polite to say anything and eventually one of the fishermen would say, "Perhaps a little too much salt", whereupon the ladleful would be discarded and the cork from the bottle of wind placed in the cauldron of soup. After being well fed, the guests would leave convinced that the cork had the property of desalinating the soup. My mother once tried the trick on my father; my brother and I were in on the plot. My father was not amused.

The first time I ate it in a restaurant was in St Tropez and I was disappointed: the broth was served separately to the fish, apparently more authentically than the description in Street Fair.

Food from Madrid

"Nothing could be better than the leg of a little lamb, roasted in a domed oven, with a salad of lettuce and some red wine" - Christopher Howse in the Spectator.

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.

Cold pork

"William and John left for Yorkshire at half past two this afternoon, cold pork in their pockets." Thus opens Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, and it inspired me, many years ago, to make a point of carrying a cold pork product of some description on a walk of any distance: a Scotch Egg, a Kabanos, Italian salami... Possibly the only thing I haven't taken is the remains of a joint of pork which is, presumably, what William Wordsworth took with him that Sunday afternoon, leaving his sorrowful sister behind him.

Hunter’s Pie (2012)

This was the first time I had ever attempted to make a cold raised pie and it involved considerable emotional investment.

In the end, I used about six chicken breasts, a poussin (which was a waste of time - scraps of meat), a guinea fowl, a pheasant, a partridge, bacon and sausage meat. There may have been a quail in there as well.

Cousin Pen helped me strip the carcasses of their meat. Mace, juniper berries and lemon zest.

Now it was time for the scary bit: the pastry. Mum's recipe said rather airily "Make a hot water short crust pastry" and I tried to think of what, precisely, I had seen her do. Inspiration came in the form of the book I suspected she took the method from: Jane Grigson's English food. Ridiculously easy it turned out. Flour (718.75 g), lard (250 g) and hot water (275 ml) mixed together then plastered round the bottom and edges of the pie tin. I had wondered whether there would be enough - but there was, just, though I had to make a little more to complete the lid. Sausage meat over the pastry. In went the meat, followed by the stock (Iberico ham bones and water - nothing else), with the lid on top, decorated with a cut out crocodile. (1/2 an hour on 6, followed by 2 hours on 3.)

The result was reassuring. A Christmas Pie: deep and crisp and even.

Blyton breakfast

"Porridge and cream," said the woman. "And our own cured bacon and our own eggs. Our own honey and the bread I bake myself. Will that do? And coffee with cream?"

"I could hug you." said Julian, beaming at her.

***

A wonderful smell came creeping into the little dining-room, followed by the inn-woman carrying a large tray. On it was a steaming tureen of porridge, a bowl of golden syrup, a jug of very thick cream, and a dish of bacon and eggs, all piled high on crisp brown toast. Little mushrooms were on the same dish.

"It's like magic!" said Anne, staring. "Just the very things I longed for!"

***

"Toast, marmalade and butter to come, and the coffee and hot milk," said the woman, busily setting everything out. "And if you want any more bacon and eggs, just ring the bell."

"Too good to be true!" said Dick, looking at the table.