Chicory gratin

Ever think that some books are just too big? Too heavy to hold, too many recipes - to the extent that the good recipes don't stand out? I initially had that reaction to all those Phaidon books - Silver Spoon, I Know How To Cook, Vefa's Kitchen - and 1080 Recipes, the Spanish book by Simone and Ines Ortega.

I've had a bit of a rethink though. I was having a browse through the other day (looking for octopus recipes) and realised that actually, 1080 Recipes is a very good book indeed. Georgous design (that goes without saying as it's Phaidon) as well as strong, squiggly illustrations from Javier Mariscal, but the recipes are also much, much better than I originally thought.

This makes me happy, as Amazon tells me I bought it back in 2007 (it's now selling for a minimum price of £50 on that site. Wow.)  and I've finally got round to using it. Reading it properly now, there are just so many things that I want to cook. The book is fearless in its inclusion of delightfully retro dishes including lots of ways with aspic (yes, deeply unpopular for years, but now becoming very chic again thanks, in part I think to Bob Bob Ricard), savoury eclairs, such as one stuffed with asparagus and mayonnaise, and infinite uses for bechamel - from jambon croquettes (my preference is for the brown shrimp variety, but that's a small point), to chicory gratin, an excellent section on vegetables with everything given due consideration - eight recipes for the lowly cauliflower and plenty for some of my favourites, including broad beans (broad beans with black pudding. Yes!) and swiss chard. Also, how often do you see ingredients like borage cropping up in your cookery books? It does here -there's a recipe for potatoes cooked with borage, garlic and paprika (you have to scrape the hairs from the stalks first).

Of course, I'm not sure I want to make *everything* - beetroot stuffed with rice is probably not high on my list of must cooks, neither is the cold rice with canned tuna and mayonnaise, but generally it's a book which I am very impressed with. I particularly like the egg and fish sections (the latter not just merely an homage to salt cod). and the over all thoroughness. It is one of the few books which bothers to give the odd pressure cooker instruction where relevent (such as for octopus). I also like the few recipes from Spanish chefs, including our own Jose Pizarro and Sam and Sam Clark (Moro).

Anyway, back to the chicory, which starts with an amazing tip: if you put chicory into a pan with salted water, bring it to the boil, and as soon as the water is boiling, transfer the chicory to another pan of boiling, salted water, it will help prevent bitterness. I wish I'd known this 2 weeks ago when I made a chicory soup which was just over the edge for me in terms of bitterness.

So - allow 2 heads per person. Cook whole, as described above, just simmer until tender (the recipe says 20 minutes - no way! More like 10). Meanwhile, make a bechamel. I do not need to tell you how to do this - I always heat up the milk first and infuse with bay, a clove studded onion, mace, peppercorns. Rub butter over an oven friendly gratin dish. Wrap the chicory heads in ham (I like to spread mustard over the ham first) and arrange in the gratin dish. Smother the whole in the bechamel, sprinkle with cheese (I usually stick to cheddar, the recipe recommends gruyere) and cook under a grill until brown and bubbling.

One of my most favourite things ever - and it could be my imagination, but I do think the chicory was slightly less bitter....

Soda Bread

This will sound sacriligious to some people, but I have never really liked soda bread. I've made it in an emergency when I've realised I am out of the regular or sourdough sort, but usually I avoid it. I never managed to make one which, presumably due to the bicarbonate of soda and lack of strong/sweet flavours to counter it, always tasted bitter, particularly in the crust.

Anyway, a couple of days ago, I decided to try again.  I was out of bread, the kids needed some for breakfast (my step-daughter is refusing to eat porridge at the moment) and it was too late for me to want to start baking bread. Soda bread it was.

A week ago I had talked to a couple of Irish friends about it, and they both said - try treacle soda bread instead. I turned again to Darina Allen's Forgotten Skills of Cooking - a wonderful book, especially for people like me who prefer to do everything from first principles and like the whole Good Life way with food.

I had already tried her brown soda bread, which unfortunately was too bitter for my tastes. The treacle version was perfect. I followed Darina's instructions for making an approximation of sour milk first (add 2 tbsp lemon juice or white wine vinegar to milk, it will start to thicken immediately), then made what is probably the quickest, easiest soda bread ever. The ingredients are minimal - a bonus actually, as most soda bread recipes have egg in, and my son is currently allergic to them (major vomiting and horrible lumpy rash. Not nice and very inconvenient).

Preheat the oven to 230C. Mix 450g plain white flour, 1 tsp salt & 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda together in a bowl. Whisk 2 tbsp treacle into 400ml sour milk/buttermilk*. Add most of this to the flour and mix. The dough should be soft, but not too sticky. If it's a bit dry, gradually add a bit more of the treacle/milk mixture.


 Shape the dough into a round of about 2.5cm deep and cut a deep cross into it. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes, then turn the oven down to 200C for around 30 minutes or until nicely browned and hollow sounding when tapped on the bottom.

This bread has been a great success in our family. The sweetness is slight enough that it still works with savoury (I like it with strong cheese), but is enough to offset the bicarb. It also keeps well (still has a good texture after a couple of days and toasts very well). I am going to experiment by using different flours and adding malt extract next time.

*the one thing I would suggest about the method is that the treacle should be mixed into just half of the milk, just in case you don't need to use all the milk - that way all the treacle will be incorporated.

Inauthenticity

I am returning again to Nigella Lawson and make no apology for it. Yes, I am being lazy. Since my last blog post, I have started several about more interesting books and not finished them. This, I can bash out in a few minutes before I have to cook the thing. The prep is done, I just need to grill some meat.

How to Eat was a book which really excited me when it first came out. It's the kind of book I hope I end up writing eventually, it seamlessly unites food writing with recipe writing in a similar way to Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries. I love its informality, the chattiness and, of course, the food. I've already talked about Nigella's inauthenticity and will no doubt return to the subject again in a more general way. There was probably a time when I was too precious to cook her "Cambodian Beef Salad", preferring to find a proper Cambodian recipe, but that was silly of me. Most of our best food writers write about cuisines other than their own and the roll call is impressive - think Elizabeth David and Jane Grigson on France, David Thompson on Thai Food, Fuchsia Dunlop on Sechzuan Cookery, Colman Andrews on the Riviera and Spain. Do we dismiss these people out of hand? Of course not. We as a nation are magpies, hoarders of other people's recipes - my specialist cusine is the Caribbean and because I've been collecting recipes from all the islands, I feel as though my knowledge base is probably much wider than many Caribbean chefs, as I am not hampered by island and family custom, but can learn wherever I go.

I digress. What I meant to say is that I am sure that if Nigella Lawson decided to focus on one particular cuisine (I imagine it would be those states in the Deep South USA, judging by her books to date), she would do it just as well as those mentioned above. As it is, she prefers to generalise, and there's nothing wrong with that. I have made this particular salad countless times, because it is very quick, exceedingly tasty and also very adaptable. Here's my adapted version, which, simply due to the fact I always have scotch bonnets in the house, always ends up a bit of a Cambodian/Caribbean hybrid:

Cambodian Hot and Sour Beef Salad

lettuce leaves (I ususally use little gem)
225g tender steak (I usually use a big piece of sirloin or rump)
2 tbsp fish sauce
2 tbsp lime juice
1 tsp sugar
1 shallot, finely sliced (I subsitute spring onions)
1-2 red chillies, deseeded & chopped finely (I use between 1/2 - 1 scotch bonnet)
handful mint (I will also add coriander leaf and sometimes basil too)

Tear the lettuce onto a serving dish. Grill the steak - I make sure mine is bloody in the middle. Mix together the fish sauce, lime juice, sugar, shallot and chillies. Cut the steak into long, slender slices and add these to your sauce, along with any juices. Add the herbs and turn out onto the lettuce.

I have been known to combine allspice and anise (a very Caribbean combination) and rub it over the steak before grilling it, but generally, I prefer without - the flavours are much, much cleaner that way.

Jelly

There's been a bit of a jelly/blancmange thing going on in my house recently. We keep coming down with lurgies and it occurred to me that jelly was perfect food for a baby with a sore throat. It's also ridiculously easy. All I've been doing is soak 4 gelatine leaves in water until soft, wring out, then stir over a low heat into 500ml of whatever juice I have handy - grape, orange, cherry, then strain them through a sieve into a mould. Easy peasy. Sometimes I suspend fruit in the jelly too (blueberries work well, or I copy my granny and use tinned clementine segments). What I haven't yet done is try to make a lime jelly. My granny used to give me lime jelly, which we used to break up and cover with evaporated milk. Lovely. I wonder how it would taste to me now?

Seeing Adam experience jelly for the first time was hilarious - his face cracked into a wide grin at the wobble factor, only to be replaced by consternation when he tried to pick it up and get it to his mouth. He soon got to grips with it (literally) and learned a technique for slurping it into his mouth from loosely clenched fist.

Then Kerstin (MsMarmiteLover) decided to make blancmange for the Fire and Knives Mixed Grill lunch. I didn't manage to try any (too busy scoffing meringue swans and truffled cheeses from the deli station) and it reminded me of the one time I made blancmange as a child. It wasn't nice - it was from a packet and I think it was peach flavoured. We had old friends of my parents staying with us, who ate some and complimented, but my mother, quite honestly, told me that they were being polite.

Looking at the recipe in Bompass and Parr's jelly book, I now wonder why I used a packet as it is as easy to make as jelly (and now I think about it we always had packets of Rowntree's jelly in the larder too - I used to steal cubes of it to suck when there was nothing else sweet available - a favourite, illicit treat). I didn't do a very good job of it though. The Bompass and Parr recipe called for infusing the milk with cardamon. I knew that my step daughter won't eat anything with cardamon in but that she and Adam both like almonds, so I decided to flavour it with honey and almond extract. Big mistake - I used too much extract and not only was the almond flavour too strong, but I could still taste the milk and the honey was barely discernable.

See, that's the main problem with blancmange - it tastes of milk, which is fine for the children (they liked it), but not fine for me. I am going to try blancmange again - this time with cardamon, rose water and honey, but I don't hold out much hope. However, there are other seriously adult recipes in the Bompass and Parr book which have to be done. I am going to be making bacon vodka to make a fizzy bacon and cola jelly very soon. Watch this space.

Mother-in-law's Madeira Cake

This is a mother-in-law's cake in more ways than one. It's the cake I always make for mine - she only likes fairly plain cakes, and she isn't supposed to have much in the way of sugar anyway, as she's diabetic. I only make it for her occasionally - any more and I feel as though I'm feeding a habit.

The recipe I usually use is in Nigella's Domestic Goddess, and is her own mother-in-law's cake. I am not one of Nigella Lawson's detractors. I think for the most part, her books are excellent - I loved How to Eat when it came out, have baked my way through Domestic Goddess and have recently raved about Kitchen - I couldn't watch the TV programme but the book - I loved it from all the advice on kitting out a kitchen (especially the her Kitchen Hall of Shame) to the totally inauthentic dishes she makes (I have no problem with this, being someone who can take pot luck with a label-less something from the freezer and consequently end up eating mutton curry with pasta and cheddar cheese). I was not so keen about the premise behind Forever Summer (strawberries in winter, natch) or her silly comments about "saving your sanity or the environment" which she fortunately readdressed in Feast.

Anyway, back to the recipe, which is an absolute cinch to make.


Cream together 240g butter, 200g caster sugar and the zest of one lemon. Gradually beat in 3 eggs along with 300g self raising flour. Add the juice from the lemon - you should have a fairly stiff dropping consistency. Put into a lined loaf tin, sprinkle with a couple of tbsp caster sugar, and bake in an oven, pre-heated to 170C for approximately one hour. Simple. 

You can of course change the flavourings. Caraway or poppy seed work very well - I recently made an orange and rosemary version which was lovely and will definitely be made again.

The only issue with the Nigella recipe, is that she specifies using a 450g loaf tin which is too small - I use a 900g/2lb tin.

West Ealing Farmers' Market

A rare non cookery book post - sometimes the ingredients are so good, you don't need to do anything to them.                                                               

The other thing which made this cold-filled weekend bearable was a two hour double bill of The Killing (to which S & I are both addicted), served up with an array of produce from our farmers' market, which is a 5 minute walk away every Saturday.

I always go, whatever the weather - I always feel that if they've made the effort and are going to stand in the rain and cold, then I should at least go and see what they're selling. I always buy from Angela Malik (her Thai pesto and an assortment of samosas, usually), who have been loyal to the market since it started - this despite the fact the demographic of WEFM is quite elderly and generally pass over a stall selling Indian food. Shame. Yesterday I bought some sourdough, feeling too lazy and ill to make any,some lovely, sweet, fresh tomatoes from the tomato stall (organic certified from the Isle of Wight - I don't usually buy tomatoes out of season at elevated prices, but yesterday I just couldn't resist) and cheese from the Bath Soft Cheese Co - inspired combination of West Country organic dairy and an Italian cheesemaker, for a lovely creamy blue cheese (much more reminiscent of a dolcelate torta than anything I've before tasted from the UK) and a delicious soft cheese which oozed its way across the plate in minutes.

So, toasted sourdough with butter melted through it, a tomato and onion salad, and the cheese, along with a bottle of wine, and for me, a couple of rum hot toddies for afters. Just what I needed.

My only other purchase at the farmers market was a pot of hyacinths for a mere £2. So I'm looking forward to their scent filling my kitchen in the next few weeks.

I hear rumblings from the stallholders at West Ealing that the market isn't doing well in terms of footfall. I'd hate for any of them to give up - it may be a small market, but it's much better value than most of them (eg., Marylebone, which is lovely, but expensive)  if you are on a budget. I regularly buy chicken carcasses/backs for stock and soup, odd cuts like rolled lamb breasts, very cheap game (one supplier even has rook and squirrel) as well as all the regular deals with the fruit and vegetable stalls. It's an important part of my weekly shop.

Curry Easy - Maddhur Jaffrey

4 reasons why this weekend has been horrible:

After congratulating myself for throwing off a cold, I woke up on Saturday morning without a voice - cold back with a vengeance.

My father-in-law (who probably gave me the cold), also has a bad cold, which meant that S couldn't take the kids to the in-laws. Apparently he caught his cold from an out of date cheesecake. Don't ask.

Both of these combined meant I couldn't take advantage of the free pass I'd been given by S to go out and enjoy myself. So my day of treats, including some shopping, tea and cakes in Great Titchfield Street's Scandikitchen and cocktails in Bob Bob Ricard was cancelled.

This meant there was little to take my mind of the fact I'd just sold my beloved car- a pepper white and black Mini Copper, which went by the name of Pig (a prize for anyone who works out why). I desperately wanted to keep it, but it just wasn't practical - we don't need two cars, and Pig simply isn't big enough to cope with 2 car seats and Adam's pushchair, let alone any luggage or shopping we might have.

So was feeling very miserable.

So, I made what I usually make when I want something comforting with least amount of effort: a big pot of spicy, cold-combatting dahl.

I've never actually followed a recipe before. Instead, I make a vague approximation of what my mother-in-law does instinctively - lazily, I usually just select a load of whole spices (clove, cardamon, cumin & coriander seed, cinnamon bark, bay, black pepper), some ground spices (turmeric, cayenne) throw them into some oil, along with some chopped onion, garlic and ginger, then add water, lentils, and either one or other of tomatoes/coconut milk - sometimes both. Sometimes I'll add some diced lamb at the beginning. I'll always cook in a pressure cooker - 10 minutes on high for the meat, before adding the lentils. If I'm just cooking lentils, the whole thing is done in 5 minutes. So you can see - minimal effort and really tasty.

But the point of this blog is to try actual recipes, so I thought I'd better put a dahl recipe to the test for the first time - I have loads of them. I'm not sure how many Indian cookery books I have, but they would fill a long shelf. As I was (am) feeling delicate, I thought a simple one would be best, so I went for one of several options in Maddhur Jaffrey's Curry Easy, Red Lentils with Ginger.

It was the most pared down I could find - onions, garlic, ginger fried in oil with ground coriander, cumin, cayenne and turmeric, then cooked with tomatoes and red lentils, with fresh coriander leaf and some butter stirred in at the end. It was nice, but unfortunately, nowhere near  as good as the one I usually make.

I have lots of dahl recipes to try (another 7 recipes in this book alone), so I'm going to keep a tally but so far, it's Me 1: Cookbooks 0.