Bacon casserole with flageolets

Possibly the first recipe I wrote down, this falls into the category of simple food for a winter supper.

Ingredients:

3 rashers of streaky or middle bacon or 1 bacon chop chopped roughly
1 medium onion chopped finely

1 tin of chopped Italian tomatoes
1 tin of flageolet beans, drained and rinsed
1 teaspoon oregano
1 bay leaf
1 tablespoon olive oil

Gently heat the olive oil then turn up the heat, add the bacon and fry until well cooked. Add the onion, turn down the heat and allow the onion to soften without burning. Add the beans and continue to cook without adding any water but making sure the contents do not burn. Finally, add the chopped Italian tomatoes and the herbs and bring to the boil. Then allow to simmer for half an hour (adding a little water if contents in danger of drying out) and serve. Eat hot or cold; good if dressed with olive oil.

Christmas pie (2008)

"My" Christmas pie has a number of variations, including its name. It's also known as "bird pie", "cold raised pie", "game pie" and "Hunter's pie". Perfect for a long walk on Boxing Day. This is the version made in 2008, recorded very basically by my mother in my recipe book.

"Dame, get up and bake your pies."

For the pastry:

6 oz lard [I use 250 g as per Jane Grigson’s English food - ie a whole pack, mixed with 5 tablespoons of hot water]
1 lb plain flour [I use 500 g]
Salt.

Make hot water crust. Mould 3/4 to line pie tin and preserve 1/4 for lid.

For the filling:

Sausage meat
Chopped bacon
Powdered mace
Pepper
Juniper berries [I now skip these as my daughters aren’t keen[
Finely chopped garlic
Grated rind of one lemon
Chicken breasts

Mix together all except the sausage meat. Line the pie with 3/4 of the sausage meat. Insert bacon and chicken breasts, cover with sausage meat and pastry top. Cook about two hours, 1st half hour 170 degrees, then 160 degrees.

It may have been on a different occasion that Mum made the large pie as normal but, with some of the leftover meat, a number of tiny pies. She also experimented once by mixing some of the sausage meat into the pastry. "God, how divine."

Herrings Alethea

Alethea was my mother's first name. This is the first recipe in the "fish" section of her recipe book and it is written in red biro in handwriting I don't recognise but may be an earlier incarnation of hers.

At the foot of the recipe in brackets is my mother's maiden name, A. Weiss, followed by a word that I cannot read. Next to the name "Herrings Alethea" in different-coloured ink is an address: 111 Woodstock Road Oxford. Was this something she cooked when working as a secretary in Oxford before she went to university? Strangely, someone has crossed out the recipe. But it is still legible and, for the record, here it is below. I don't remember ever having eaten it.

Cut and fillet 1 herring for each person. Lay flat on floured board and place slices of garlic, dabs of French mustard and a few drops of lemon juice. Clean 1 small sweet pepper and a couple of tomatoes, fry them lightly in cooking oil along with a few very thin slices of onion.

Place a few teaspoons of this mixture inside each herring, roll it up and place in a greased baking tin. Plcae remains of tomato/pepper mixture on and around fish and then pour about half a cup of milk over them. (The roes should be chopped up and placed inside the fish.) Season and bake [?] in a low oven until fish is tender.

MOT

Stands for marmite, onion and tomato. That doesn't do it justice. Let me do some explaining.

First, good bread: one of those slightly dry "pain de campagne" or a baguette. Lightly toasted. Then spread marmite thinly on it; butter underneath the marmite if you wish. Finely chop some cherry tomatoes, or any other kind of tomato, provided it isn't Dutch. Then finely chop a shallot, or about a third of an onion. Mix with the tomato and squeeze on some lemon juice. Scatter it on the marmited toast. Scrape the tomato juices and any stray pips from the chopping board on to the bits of toast as well. Eat.

Making salt

In about September 1981, I began studying Chemistry at school as a separate subject. My career as a chemist was to come to an ignominious end four years later when I dropped the subject, having achieved the distinction of the lowest mark in the exams in the entire school year.

But I still remember aspects of the subject with affection. Burning magnesium! My white shirt being turned into a chromatogram by some clever idiot in the desk behind me, using ink, a pipette and surgical spirit or similar. Best of all, in that very first lesson in 1981, we made salt.

The process involved dissolving a pile of what looked like sand in water, heating the water (Bunsen burner) and then - can't remember the detail but I think filter paper may have been involved somewhere - ending up with a small and rather damp pile of salt.

Very satisfyingly, we were allowed to take the results of our experiment into the dining hall to have with our lunch. Monday lunches were particularly dispiriting: salad, so-called. The salt improved the undressed lettuce and slab of pork pie.

It may have been on the same occasion that I was required by the prefect in charge of the table (I shall name and shame him: Jonathan Harding) to eat my pork pie jelly, a feat I managed only by melting it into the barely warm mashed potato on my plate.

Tomatoes and peppers

The tomatoes from Tuscany, the peppers from the stall next to the bus stop where I got off at Leyton after my flight back from Italy.

Spaghetti alla vongole

This is Part 2 of my trip to Ventimiglia. I remind you of the date: 11 September 2001.

After stocking up with Parma ham and Napoli salami (both to be the subjects of other entries, I predict) and a quick whisk around the covered market, we headed to a restaurant on the coast for lunch.

It was Pen’s treat – and I should add that it almost always is. The only way to prevent this from happening is to agree very precisely with her well in advance that she will in no circumstances be the one to settle up at the end of the meal. Even then, she has been known to slip quietly away from the table and, before you could say “bill”, she has already requested and paid it.

Unusually for me, it was not a meal where starters were in order. I can only recall what I ate which was perhaps as perfect a choice as I could have made at that particular moment: for the very first meal I ate in Italy, right by the coast, outside, at lunchtime on a warm September day. Spaghetti alla vongole. Normally, I avoid spaghetti. If I were being dishonest, I would say that it was because spaghetti are cylindrical and so the sauce falls off which simply does not happen to the flatter types of pasta. But I cannot even explain my prejudice to my own satisfaction.

The shells in spaghetti alla vongole are a good sign. If they are not there, I suspect tinned clams. You need little else other than the clams: a little greenery, some wine, perhaps some shreds of chilli. A plate on which to discard the emptied shells. A fork and people surrounding you who have no objection to your helping the clams out with your fingers. My heart usually sinks when I hear the expression a “light lunch”, but if it consisted of a bowl of spaghetti alla vongole, I’d be very happy.

This golden day ended shortly after we arrived back in Lorgues, at about 4 in the afternoon, French time. We had just settled down on the terrasse, when suddenly the telephone rang. Pen took the call in the house and came outside shortly afterwards in tears. Her friend, Monique, had told her to switch on the television.