Mustard

 I once put up a very similar post to this one, but my views below are, I think, worth echoing. I will no doubt discover a number of people who disagree with this. I consider Coleman’s English mustard kills flavour. The powdered version is useful for dusting beef, for making fresh horseradish sauce or as an ingredient in many other dishes (eg barbecue sauce). I occasionally like the very process of making it using the powder and adding water and leaving to rest. But my mustard of choice is Dijon: sufficient piquancy but not robbing the underlying dish of flavour. A slightly milder but still pleasing mustard is coarse grain. I would prefer either to English (too hot), American (too sweet), or German (too oddly flavoured). And I have never understood why in England if you ask for French mustard a revoltingly sweet brown concoction is produced that has been nowhere near France; it is almost as though it is an attempt to put people off French mustard in favour of English. Indeed I would prefer English to THAT particular variety despite my prejudices away from English. For completeness, I also reject whisky, truffle or any other weirdly flavoured mustard. Again, mustard is so strongly flavoured that I don’t see the point. Other than tarragon mustard which is rather good. Enough from me.

Rhubarb soufflé

This is my own version, based on lots of different recipes I found online. From sources as diverse as “The Times of India” and The Express. Not a single one of the recipes I found was quite right - and any containing cornflour I am afraid I rejected at once.

INGREEDIENCE

300g rhubarb

25g sugar (to mix with raw rhubarb)

Glug of elderflower syrup

3 tablespoons golden caster sugar (to mix with egg whites)

4 egg whites

2 egg yolks

METHOD

Chop the rhubarb into roughly 1.5 inch chunks. Mix with 25g sugar and glug of elderflower syrup. Bake for 25 mins in oven gas mark 9. Mash rhubarb. Allow to cool.

Beat egg whites. Fold in sugar and egg yolks. Finally add rhubarb. Stir together. Spoon into 6 ramekins. Will probably make 7 so one spare.

Bake ramekins for 8 mins on gas mark 9.

Eat.

Two go adventuring again

 I have just had an experience taken straight out of a Famous Five book. You know, the kind where Julian (my namesake) turns up at a farmhouse wanting to buy some milk and gets presented not only with the fresh milk but newly-laid eggs and half a cake. And "I wouldn't dream of charging you, young master. Right nice they are, I'll be bound."

And the episode happened in Buckinghamshire, where Enid Blyton lived for most of her life, and wrote many of her books. I had passed the place many times in a cab on the way to the local station but there had never been an opportunity to go inside, until now. A temporary traffic light, a queue of traffic behind, light drizzle, and the right hand turn leading to (if I had remembered correctly) the farm shop I had spotted previously. And there it was. No lights visible, nowhere obvious to park, and my wife was convinced, at just after 5.00 pm, that the place was closed, so stayed in the car. I was a little more hopeful, having seen the sign outside which they would surely have brought in at closing time. "Follow the garden path to the farm shop" said the sign. So I started walking across the farmhouse garden, thinking that the slightly trodden grass amounted to the path. Then I heard a voice. I was in trouble, I thought. But no. The bearded farmer, wreathed in smiles ("Closed? No we only close after the last customer has left") beckoned me in. I hastened back to the car to fetch my wife and we went in. "It's not much", said our host, "I don't want you to get too excited." But excited we were: a loaf of fresh gingerbread we snaffled at once. Then a jar of homemade honey. "Do you need any eggs?" My wife replied, "I think we've got eggs". "You'll never taste an egg like these ones. Take two as a present." Needing no further invitation, but rejecting the idea of a free gift, I started filling a box with half a dozen. And there was home-cured bacon as well. When we settled up, we were told: "I'm not charging you all that for the honey", and he knocked fifty pence off. Through a doorway, we saw his wife, surrounded by even more eggs on the kitchen table. Away we went, already planning to return.

More about Bombay Toast

 Bombay Toast (or should I now call it Mumbai Toast?) is a favourite breakfast comestible in this household. It was first introduced to me by two friends in Madras (now Chennai) over thirty years ago. My wife insists that it is in fact French Toast. But this morning, I rather foolishly cooked it in a pan in which I had a night or so before cooked what I describe as Aloo Chaat (and which my wife insists, correctly, is nothing of the kind, but which might safely be described as currified potato and things) and which had clearly not be washed as thoroughly as it might have been. When presented with her two slices of “Bombay Toast”, my younger stepdaughter ate one of the slices and told me that it looked slightly as though it had been cooked in highlighter (Turmeric I fear) and tasted a “bit weird”. I asked her not to inform her sister of the issue (on the basis that that helping might never be sampled if she did) and she graciously obliged. The elder stepdaughter ate all of hers with no complaint. And my wife ate the remainder of the younger’s, in the full knowledge of the Bombayness (on this occasion) of the toast. For my part, when everyone had popped out for the day, I decided to use a clean pan for mine.

First night in Pisa

Sometimes, I am told, a memory of a fine meal is situational, rather than related to the quality of the food. I am not entirely convinced. But my first ever meal in Pisa, which was my first ever evening meal in Italy, has stayed with me for many years. Since 2008 in fact.

I was by myself but, like Dr Watson in one of my favourite Holmes stories, had no time to be lonely. The holiday which lay ahead was a walking holiday in Tuscany. But I was not due to arrive in the marvellously named “Castelnuevo di Garfagnana” - Newcastle of the Enchanted Forest - for a couple of days and had decided to spend some nights in Pisa. Having arrived in the afternoon, I had already seen the Leaning Tower and wandered around the empty streets surrounding it: pleasingly, a few moments outside the tourist trap surrounding the Tower, was medieval calm.

I can recall nothing about where I stayed that night but imagine that I chose somewhere to eat that was nearby. I sat outside, took photographs of my food and scribbled in my notebook. I have written before about my first meal in Italy which was on 11 September 2001. On that occasion, Cousin Pen had said she wasn’t hungry enough for more than one course so I, out of politeness, had followed suit. This evening, with no one to please but myself, I opted for all the courses.

I remember little about the antipasti or the secondi, but they were better than merely adequate. The pasta, though, put everything in the shade. Taglioni, which I had never had before, with fresh truffle. I can still taste it.

I recall one incident well. A girl aged about ten, I supposed, coming towards the restaurant and seeing her friend, rushing towards her, throwing herself at her in delight with the customary “ciao ciao”. The friend was equally pleased to see her. The encounter had all the warmth of the Mediterranean.

I finished my meal with a vin santo accompanied by little almond biscuits to dip into the glass.

One should never try to recreate meals and fortunately I did not have the opportunity. On the walking part of the holiday, I raved about the meal I had enjoyed and when we all arrived at Pisa to return to the airport at the end of our holiday with a few hours to spare, I suggested having lunch at the same restaurant: I had in mind more taglioni with truffle. My fellow walkers were themselves keen or decided to humour me. But when we arrived at the restaurant, it was closed.

A collection of fictional meals

Name the author... A refreshing ginger beer, ginger ale, lemonade, orangeade, honey lemonade, icy cold creamy farm milk, natural clear cold spring water or pineapple juice diluted with ice-cold water out of Naomi Barlow's old well. Or maybe, if you're feeling chilly, a mug of steaming cocoa, strong and milky coffee or tea made with blackcurrant jam. Breakfast from "The Three Shepherds" consisting of a steaming tureen of porridge, a bowl of golden syrup, a jug of very thick cream, and a dish of their own cured bacon and their own eggs, all piled high on crisp brown toast, with little mushrooms on the same dish, and toast, butter, marmalade (that Kiki's been pecking the rinds out of), butter and their own honey, to come. Perhaps a light lunch from the dairy (Fatty’s treat), served by a plump woman in a vast white apron to serve you and beam at you. Two boiled eggs apiece and some plates of bread and butter (with strawberry jam – they’re her own growing, the strawberries), and some of her own bottled gooseberries if you like, with a jug of cream. And she’d made some new buns, would you like some? Or perhaps a picnic lunch instead. Freshly-baked bread, mustard and cress sandwiches, tins of tongue, tins of sardines, pork pie, pickled onions (Dick's favourite) an enormous hard-boiled egg salad, rain-swollen lettuces, crisp, juicy and sweet, cucumber dipped in vinegar, nuts arranged in handwoven baskets (gathered by Jack). And some ripe plums from the tree: you can spit out the stones down at the beach. Afternoon tea with Clarissa’s old nurse. Tongue sandwiches with lettuce, hard-boiled eggs to eat with bread-and-butter, great chunks of new-made cream cheese, potted meat, ripe tomatoes grown in Mrs. Lucy’s brother’s greenhouse, gingerbread cake fresh from the oven, shortbread, a great fruit cake with almonds crowding the top, biscuits of all kinds and six jam sandwiches! Followed by a farm-house high-tea: a fresh ham, glistening pink. A veal-and-ham pie smothered in green parsley, like the ham. Yellow butter in glass dishes. A blue jug of thick yellow cream. (NOT to go with the ham, Gussy!) Honey. Home-made strawberry jam. Hot buttery and jammy scones. A large fruit-cake as black as a plum pudding inside. Egg sandwiches. Tea, cocoa and creamy milk. Supper of kippers cooked over an open fire, potatoes cooked in their jackets with butter, and sausages burnt and a little burst on one side, with fried tomatoes. And a midnight feast to finish off with: eclairs, Silky's Pop biscuits, macaroons, currant buns, meringues, blackberry tart, a jam sponge, Joanna's chocolate cake, big slabs of cherry cake (left by Aggie under the bushes), thick, sticky pieces of gingerbread, sugar biscuits, chocolate ices, chocolate biscuits, juicy ripe strawberries and cream, greengages fresh from Old Thatch and Green Hedges, tinned peaches, tinned pineapple, tins of Nestlé's Milk, large melting ice creams and toffee shocks presented by Moonface. And some bullseyes--the hottest you can find! Not to mention the Tippy-top pudding, Poppity cake and Google buns cooked by the elf on Angela's little toy stove. And an ice cream pudding which had dainty biscuits of all kinds set around it. Cooking good, very good cooking!

Grandfather’s Curry Puffs

My grandfather was mainly conservative in his tastes: grey beef, thinly sliced, cooked within an inch of its life. He was fond of smoked salmon and sugared almonds - although polite hints were dropped when the sweets became the present he would always receive from his grandchildren. He would sometimes take charge of the cooking: barbecue chicken was a favourite of his. And he introduced me to Bolst's mango pickle.

So it was that my mother was particularly fond of introducing her father-in-law, my grandfather, to foods she thought he might enjoy. She knew he had been born in Bangalore, and she once produced some Tamarind for him. Curry puffs he also liked. For his funeral, she commissioned me to buy a hundred vegetable samosas from my local takeaway which were provided most beautifully wrapped. But the beef, on this occasion, was served rare.