Another source of material has emerged in the shape of my grandmother's battered red file of recipes, some typed, some handwritten. I dislike the title of the first recipe, "Cheese special" - but having sampled a few scrapings from the bowl in advance of a dinner party where this was the starter, can testify to its goodness.
Ingredients:
1 Philadelphia cheese
1 Boursin cheese with garlic
1 tin of C&B consommé - 8 oz
1 teaspoon Worcester sauce
4 oz single cream
Optional: a few prawns or shrimps
A little parsley
Method:
Put 3/4 of consommé into bleder.
Add both cheeses, Worcester sauce and cream.
Mix slowly if slightly lumpy or fast if smooth result required.
Pour into 5 or 6 ramekin dishes leaving 1/4 inch space at top.
Optional: add prawns/shrimps by hand before pouring into dishes.
Place in fridge for about 1/2 hour.
Remove from fridge and pour remaining consommé on top.
Return to fridge.
Serve:
Remove from fridge a few minutes before serving and sprinkle with a little parsley.
A very seventies dish which sounds potentially disgusting but is in fact rather good. Although I can certainly recall Granny making this as described above, I think my mother did something similar but without the consommé on top which she called "Snaffles mousse".
Saturday, 9 January 2016
Friday, 8 January 2016
Gammon and spinach
My maternal grandmother's maiden name was Cecil; it is part of family legend that we are descended from Elizabeth I's Secretary of State. Another is that we have all inherited something called the "Cecil Mean Gene". That is to say, put at its gentlest, we avoid spending money and gain serious satisfaction from a bargain. Last night, I found myself in precisely that frame of mind while wandering around the supermarket. I lingered over the "Reduced to Clear" shelves, a place where there is a hint of tension. Will anything really exciting arrive there during my survey, so I get first dibs? Will someone manage to grab something before I do? I tend to watch people like a hawk, noticing what they pick up, occasionally willing them to return it so that I can then snatch it. It's like a return to toddlerhood.
What I found last night was a large piece of gammon which had been reduced to half price - the reason being, I surmised, that the best before date was that very day. Into the basket it went.
At home, I decided to conduct a little experiment. The gammon would be simply roasted. I stuck a few cloves in. Then, taking an idea from Nigella Lawson (cooking ham in coca cola) I tipped over the ham the dregs of a bottle of ginger beer and then smeared some honeycomb on top, put it into a hot oven and waited for a couple of hours.
I think it worked. The ginger beer had completely dried up on the bottom of the roasting tin. The fat of the ham was completely blackened and shiny. The ham itself was neither too moist nor too dry. I had some of the end for breakfast this morning, with unsalted butter, coarse grain mustard, in a hot cross bun.
As for spinach, I've never eaten it with gammon.
Wednesday, 6 January 2016
Shrimp paste
It had lain in the kitchen cupboard for a long time: a suspiciously brown block - a lump smelling strongly of what it was: shrimp paste. Mum pondered it and told us that had we all been in a concentration camp, she would have mixed a tiny amount of it with rice. In the end she threw the packet away.
Tuesday, 5 January 2016
Logs
I have just seen a sign advertising "seasoned logs". I mean, what do they do with them? Sprinkle them with salt and pepper?
Wednesday, 30 December 2015
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:
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.
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.
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.
Sunday, 27 December 2015
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.
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.
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