Tag: food

A Very English Pudding

The other day, we had French friends to dinner.  They bravely agreed to curry.  I thought I ought to check beforehand: the French – round here anyway – are curiously resistant to the fiery charms of the chilli plant, and hot spices generally.  They shouldn’t have worried, and neither should we.  They cleaned their plates and came back for more.

Having assaulted their palates with unfamiliar flavours, I wanted to make something rich and soothing to round off the meal.  And I remembered that, back in England, my friend Barbara had recently treated us to lemon posset.  It’s been around a few centuries, and was by no means a new recipe when Samuel Pepys had it for supper back in the 17th century.

At once palate-cleansing and luxurious, it’s so simple to make.  And when your guests ask for the recipe, you know you’ve struck gold.  Here it is:

Lemon Posset

Serves 4

500 – 600 ml. double or whipping cream (crème fleurette).  The quantities aren’t crucial.  Use a couple of pots of what’s available.

Up to150g. caster sugar
Juice of 3-4 medium lemons

Pour cream and sugar into a small saucepan. Slowly bring to the boil, stirring constantly to dissolve the sugar. Once boiling cook for a further three minutes, still stirring constantly.

Remove from the heat and pour in half the lemon juice whilst stirring the mixture thoroughly. It should start to thicken instantly. Taste the mixture and if its not quite tart enough for your tastes then put a little more juice in. It should be tangy but still very rich.

Allow the posset to cool for approximately five minutes and then pour into 4 glasses, coffee cups, or any small, pretty containers. The posset will start to visibly thicken as it hits the cool glass or porcelain. Cover and chill in the fridge for at least 3 hours. The posset should be quite firmly set.

Serve with lemon shortbread or other biscuits of your choice, or a fruit coulis.

Andorra

Tell most Ariegeois that you’re going to Andorra, and they’ll assume you’re popping over to stock up on hooch, cigarettes, cosmetics and cleaning products, then fill the car with as much petrol or diesel as it’ll hold.

The Principat de les Valles de Andorra is a little historical oddity.  It’s a Catalan speaking independent country, only 468 square km., slap in the midst of the Pyrénées between France and Spain.  It was, since 1278, co-ruled by the President of France (as the Count of Foix is no more) and the Bishop of La Seu d’Urgell in Cataluña.  In odd numbered years, France receives tribute money, and in even-numbered years, the Spanish bishop calls in 900 pesetas (or the euro equivalent, I suppose), 12 chickens, 6 hams and 12 cheeses. 1n 1993, the Andorrans voted for democracy and a constitution- but those tributes still get paid.

What makes Andorra popular, here in the Ariège as elsewhere in France, is its lack of taxes.  Petrol therefore costs something like 40 cents a litre less than in neighbouring France, and you can buy 3 new car tyres for the cost of two here.  And so on.  So Andorra’s border towns are nothing more than huge unpleasant shopping malls, blighting the slopes of the wilderness Pyrénées on which they’re situated.  The capital city, Andorra le Velle, and the surrounding towns which have become its suburbs, are given over to little other than retail therapy.

In other words, not really our cup of tea.

Andorra, though, offers so much more.  Zig-zag up the narrow mountain roads only a few kilometres away from the capital, and you’ll be alone amongst grand peaks, dense forest and craggy paths.  Apparently, the further you travel from the capital, the wilder and more spectacular the scenery becomes.  Tiny villages remain undefended by castles: the circumstances of its past government meant castles were forbidden.  But charming Romanesque churches, often with original frescoes, are common throughout the country.

Henri and Brigitte invited his cousin and wife and us, to join them on a mid-week break at an Andorran hotel they’d chanced upon a few months ago.  Henri doesn’t do bargain basement, so we were surprised when he told us that full board at this 3 star hotel was 51 euros each.

Hostal La Font is in a tiny village, Os de Civis, clinging to the mountain side not, as it turned out, in Andorra at all.  It’s in Spain.  But it might as well not be.  The one road serving the community connects the village to Andorra la Velle and to nowhere whatsoever in Spain.  Out of season, 20 people live there.

It was busy when we checked in to the hotel though, just in time for lunch.  Vegetarians need not apply.  Before the meal, tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, dried sausage, olives all appeared on the table.  Then a hearty meatball-cabbage-chickpea-potato soup arrived.  Then a selection of salads and charcuterie.  Full yet?  I hope not.  There’s grilled lamb and 3 different sorts of grilled sausage with baked potato, and a large choice of puddings to come.  The secret of course is to help yourself to tiny portions of everything offered: that’s what I did anyway, because I knew there would be a 3 course meal in the evening, and Henri has a way of making sure that nobody does their own thing by skipping dinner – or even a course.

Anyway, after lunch, we all chose to stride forth into the mountains.  Henri’s cousin, Jean-Claude, has been a lifelong farmer, and made a great walking companion.  We learnt from him the grasses that any discerning sheep chooses, given half a chance.  He showed us how the local cows, a Swiss grey breed, have narrow agile hooves and legs to enable them to cope with climbing up and down the steep slopes of their summer pasture.  And he told us tales of transhumance: the days in spring and autumn when cows and sheep are taken up to high pastures for the summer, and down again in winter: for his sheep, each journey took three days.

Later, we explored the village.  Just as well the streets are equipped with handrails.  Steepest village I’ve met.  The dark local stone is the picturesque material both houses and streets are built from.  It might look pretty in the September sun, but life looks tough here, and I’m not surprised the village all but closes once the tourists go.

We’ll be back.  A walking week or so in these wild and empty mountains is a must, and hotels are affordable.  Anyway, the car needed 2 new tyres, and the money we saved by buying in Andorra all but paid for the holiday.

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SOS Courgette Alert!

Just now, as September begins, the vegetable patch is at its most productive.  The beans, the cabbages, the tomatoes, the new potatoes……  It’s all so very satisfying…apart from one thing.  Courgettes.  They never give up.

It’s a far cry from a few weeks ago, when the flamboyant yellow flowers first announced the appearance of just a few of those tiny delicately flavoured green fingers, waiting to be celebrated as the centrepiece of a light summer meal.  Exciting times.

Now they’ve become something of a trial.  Day after day we courgette-farmers haul dozens of the things back to the kitchen. We comb recipe books and scour the net, seeking yet more inspiration.  I think we have to support each other.  It’s time for every blogger with a veg. patch or allotment to offer inspiration to us all.  Even if you normally write about politics, music or the vagaries of the fashion industry, you and your ideas are needed as a service to the whole courgette-growing-community.

Here’s a recipe to start things off.  This dish is good as part of an Indian-style meal, or as a complement to, say, simply grilled meat.

Courgettes cooked in pickling spices: a recipe from Hyderabad.

2 tablespoons oil or ghee

I tablespoon pickling spices

½ tablespoon ground turmeric

½ tablespoon chilli powder

½ tablespoon ground coriander

2 large tomatoes, skinned and chopped

450 g. courgettes, diced

Salt

Chunk of fresh ginger, grated

2 green chillies, finely chopped

½ tablespoon Kashmiri masala

I tablespoon fresh coriander

Heat the oil in a deep pan and temper with the pickling spices.  Reduce the heat and add the turmeric, chilli and ground coriander.  Sauté for one minute and add the tomatoes. When the mixture has thickened, add the courgettes and season to taste.  Cook till the courgettes are soft. Just before the end of cooking time, add the ginger, chillies and Kashmiri masala.  Garnish with fresh coriander and serve.

Both the pickling spices and Kashmiri masala can be made in batches and used as required.  They’re useful additions to the store cupboard if you enjoy Indian food.

Pickling spices:

1 tablespoon cumin seeds

1 tablespoon black cumin seeds

1 tablespoon kalonji

½ tablespoon mustard seeds

Kashmiri masala

2 tablespoons fennel seeds

1 tablespoon cardamom seeds

6 bay leaves

2 tablespoons mace

Grind to a powder and keep in an airtight container

Actually, though, we’ve just come back from a week in Italy. That’s far more exciting, so…….to be continued in our next

Forecast: Rain. Stiff Upper Lip Not Required

We’ve finally made it back to France, after 4 weeks of family, fun, and titivating our house there for marketing purposes.  When we arrived, stocking up with food was a problem.  The shop was closed: the baker’s was closed: holidays you see.  Then I remembered the evening market at La Bastide sur l’Hers.

Over the last few years, during July and August, evening markets have grown in popularity in the towns and villages in this part of the world.  Originally, the idea was to attract people in to spend a pleasant hour or two browsing at the stalls offering hand-crafted goods and bits of this and that.  Increasingly, they’ve become somewhere to come to have a night off cooking, and spend a cheerful hour or two eating or drinking with friends.  There are always plenty of food stalls: couscous, paella, oriental stir fries, pizzas, barbecued meats…..   Bring your own knives and forks, don’t forget the corkscrew, find a place at a communal table, sit down and enjoy!

Well, that was what we planned for yesterday.  Then it started to look grey. Soft warm raindrops slowly started to drop intermittently from the sky.  With no food in the house, we had to go anyway.  We knew we’d be alone.  The French seem to have no appetite, like we Brits, who are used to such things, for hiking in the rain, or market shopping in a storm.  In the past, we’ve been victim of the cancelled walks, we’ve seen the empty market squares.

This time, we were wrong.  We chose a spot at a table under a row of plane trees which sheltered us from the worst of the rain, bought our food, opened our wine, and tucked in as we got gradually damper and damper.  We people-watched: there were plenty of people to watch.  We saw others doing the same.  We saw families arrive with their cool boxes, determinedly striding through the puddles.  We saw chivalrous men standing with opened umbrellas protecting the rest of their party from the worst of the weather. We laughed and shared the fun with our neighbours at table as the rain got heavier and heavier.  Obé’s paella has never tasted better.

Some lucky people - including the musicians - kept dry under the shelter of the market hall

Summer Fruit

With a house to sell in England, we’re still here in the UK.  So let’s make the most of  it, particularly at mealtimes.  Here’s how.

Apples:

With any luck, Discovery, the very first apples of the season will appear any day now.  I love their bright red skin, their crisp white crunchy flesh.  They’re hopeless keepers, but for just a very few weeks, their bright fresh flavour presents a real contrast to the departing soft summer fruits.

And when they’re over?  Well, there are James Grieves, Laxton Supreme, Laxton Superb, Worcester Pearmain, Lord Lambourne, Cox’s Orange Pippin and so many others to look forward to…if you can find them.  And of course Bramley Seedlings too, so wonderful to cook with.

I was brought up to anticipate and celebrate the heady variety of taste, texture and appearance of all our English apples.  These days I mourn the uniformity of the standard few varieties that stock the supermarket shelves, year in, year out.  Often as not, they’re imported from New Zealand, South Africa, the USA, and France, while our own traditional varieties have become heritage items whose very existence is protected by Reading University’s National Fruit Collection at Brogdale

Blackcurrants:

I KNOW they’re available in France, but when we got back this time, we discovered a small blackcurrant bush had been secretly prospering in a forgotten corner of the garden.  And there it was, laden with big dark purple berries, over a kilo of them, just asking to picked and enjoyed

Gooseberries:

Gooseberries, white, red and blackcurrants

Hardly seen in France, I love their crisp sour flesh, and eat them any way I can. Gooseberry fool is best of all: gently stewed fruit folded in with equal portions of good custard and double cream.

Raspberries:

They DO exist in France, but can’t compete with the big, juicy, tasty berries we have here: the best ones come from the garden of our friends Richard and Jonet here in Harrogate (and the best jam too).  The rest come from Scotland.

Repeated pleasures:

Back in southern France, broad beans are long over.  Here they’re at their best, so I’ve had two goes this year at my almost-favourite vegetable.  OK, not a fruit. But very good anyway.

Summer pudding:

Surely the quintessential English pud?  Gently cooked quantities of soft summer fruits, spooned into a basin that’s been lined with pappy English sliced bread, left for the flavours to mingle before turning out and serving with cream doesn’t sound too exciting maybe.  But it is.  Summer in England really isn’t summer until you’ve had your first helping. And as many helpings as you can manage before the season’s over

Summer Pudding

Ingredients

  • 1kg (2lb) mixed berries (use a combination
  • of raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, redcurrants or blackcurrants)
  • 160g (5½oz) caster sugar
  • 10 thin slices stale white bread, crusts removed

Method

  • Place the berries, sugar and 60ml (2fl oz) of water in a saucepan. Bring to a gentle simmer on a low heat and cook, stirring to dissolve the sugar, for 3-4 minutes, or until the fruit has softened and produced lots of juice. Set aside to cool.
  • Pour the juice into a flat dish, reserving the fruit.
  • Cut one slice of bread into a circle small enough to fit the base of a 1.5l (48 fl oz) pudding basin, and another large enough to fit the top. Cut the remaining slices into triangles. Dip both sides of the smaller circle of bread quickly into the juice and place it in the bottom of the pudding basin. Dip both sides of each triangle of bread into the juice, then line the inside of the basin with the juice-soaked bread, overlapping them slightly to make sure there are no gaps.
  • Fill the bread-lined basin with berries, drizzle with any remaining juice and top with the larger circle of bread, trimming it to fit if necessary.
  • Cover the top of the pudding with clingfilm, then place a saucer or small plate that just fits inside the rim of the basin on top. Press the plate in, then weigh it down with a heavy can or two. Place the basin in a shallow dish to catch any juice that might overflow, and refrigerate for at least 12 hours.
  • To serve, run a thin knife around the inside of the basin and invert the pudding on to a serving plate. Cut into wedges and serve accompanied with plenty of thick cream.

Chicken Tonight

Chicken is a bit of an occasional treat for us, but first….. source your hen.

Buying eggs - perhaps a chicken - at Lavelanet marketWe buy our eggs from a man with a stall in Lavelanet market. He’s a rather dour chap with a tendency to tell you off if you forget to bring an egg box for your purchases.  But our friend Mireille has seen all his chickens pottering about in their huge field in the countryside south of Toulouse.  She assures us they lead a thoroughly idyllic, bucolic existence, with nothing to do but feed, fossick for grubs and lay eggs for all the customers, until one fine day….  it’s all over, for one of them.  Killed, plucked, gutted, packed up, and brought into market for someone like me.  They’re only killed to order.  On one Friday, you’ll tell him what you’d like to have, and the following week, he brings it to market for you.

And the 11 euros or so we pay is such good value. His birds are so tasty, a little goes a long way: and once we’ve picked every scrap of flesh off, there’s all that wonderfully rich stock from the bones.

This is one of our very favourite recipes: and it’s easy too.  Good hot or cold, summer or winter

Moroccan Chicken with Preserved  Lemons and Olives

Serves 4

Ingredients

1.5kg Free-range chicken
1 Large onion, finely chopped in a food processor
4 Garlic cloves, crushed
100g Butter
1 tbsp Ground ginger
1 Cinnamon stick
¾ tsp Turmeric
¾ tsp Saffron strands
3 tbsp Lemon juice
100g Kalamata olives
100g Small preserved lemons, halved, flesh discarded
50g Chicken liver, chopped
10g Coriander, chopped
10g Flat-leaf parsley leaves, chopped.

Method

  1. Put the chicken into a flameproof casserole, tagine or saucepan in which it will fit snugly. Add the onion, garlic, butter, ginger, cinnamon stick, turmeric and saffron; season. Pour in 700ml water, cover and bring to the boil over a medium-to-high heat. Reduce the heat and leave to simmer, spooning the sauce over the chicken and turning it over now and then until it is just cooked through – about 40 minutes. Lift the chicken onto a plate and cover with foil.
  2. Add the lemon juice to the casserole, increase the heat once more and simmer the sauce rapidly until reduced by about two-thirds. Return the chicken to the casserole with the olives and pieces of preserved lemon, cover with a well-fitting lid and simmer for a further 20–25 minutes until the chicken is tender. Lift the chicken onto a large, warmed platter.
  3. Add the chicken liver to the sauce and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the herbs and adjust the seasoning if necessary. Spoon the sauce over the chicken and serve.

    Happy Hen?

Christmas Hooch

Young walnuts on the tree

Léonce has a walnut tree outside her house.  On the 24th June, she picked just 40 baby walnuts.

Why 24th June?  Well, it’s traditionally Midsummer Day, celebrated here by huge pagan bonfires, but named for John the Baptist whose birthday it’s said to be (le Feu de la St. Jean).  On this day, summer fruits are at their most perfect, and just asking to be picked.  So they say.

And why pick the nuts when they’re still green, the fruit within unformed? It’s to make a Christmas treat – vin de noix.  This year, Léonce asked me to come and be part of her select manufacturing team of two.

Spices at the ready

When I arrived at her house, with my demijohn (or bonbonne), red wine and eau de vie, her kitchen table was already crowded with all the other ingredients we needed:

Brown sugar cubes – Oranges – Star Anise – Vanilla – Cinnamon sticks

Cloves – Nutmeg – Peppercorns.

They don't look much like walnuts, do they?

I got the job of cutting the walnuts into four.  You need rubber gloves for this.  Without them, your fingers would be stained a vivid orangey yellow, like those of a lifelong heavy smoker.

These are the hands that cut the nuts.....

Meanwhile, Léonce sliced oranges, measured and crushed spices, and opened bottles of wine – we needed 4 litres each, and one litre of eau de vie.

Finally we were ready.  We pushed the walnut segments into our large jars, followed by chunks of orange, the sugar cubes, and then the spices.  All those bottles of wine, all that eau de vie glugged down to mix with everything else, and then all we had to do was cork our bonbonnes, and lug them to a dark cool storage room.

in goes the wine....

We’ll leave them there for 6 weeks for the flavours to blend and develop, then we’ll strain and bottle our concoctions, and leave them again to mature as long as possible.  Don’t do as I do.  Every time I pass, I uncork the bonbonne and have another quick sniff.  Quite wonderful.

You’re not expecting vin de noix from me in your Christmas stocking this year are you?  Oh no, sorry, that’s far too soon.  It’ll be Christmas 2011 at the earliest.  It takes a long time to produce a decent vin de noix.

So here’s the recipe…

Vin de noix

The recipe: french version

40 green walnuts, each chopped into 4

40 brown sugar cubes

1 orange, chopped into chunks, peel and all

4 cloves

1 cinnamon stick

½ tsp. grated nutmeg

½ tsp. black pepper

½ tsp. vanilla essence, or a small vanilla pod

2 star anise, crushed

4 litres of red wine (13 – 14%)

1 litre eau de vie de fruits (40%)

Put the lots into a demi-john and leave for 40 days.  Filter and bottle and leave to mature for at least a year.  The older the better.

A table full of good things and ready for action

Spice

Yesterday, it was the last day of term at Clé des Chants, one of the choirs I belong to.  As usual, we finished the year with a shared meal.

In the course of the evening, I was chatting to Bernard and Pierrot, mildly teasing them that as usual, the women had cooked food to bring, while the men had brought the wine.  After they’d defended themselves with some vigour, they asked me about English food.

I always find this question quite difficult to respond to, now that we English are more likely to sit down to spaghetti Bolognese, a Chinese-style stir-fry, or a pungent curry, than steak and kidney pudding with two veg. followed by jam roly-poly and custard.  So I talked about the English love affair with curry, and said how we liked ’em spicy.

Bernard: ‘Oh, cooked with saffron – that sort of thing’

Me: ‘No – chillies, cumin, turmeric, ginger – that sort of thing’

Bernard: ‘In that case, I had a curry once, chilli con carne I think it was called.  Didn’t like it.’

Which is, in one way, surprising. The French colonial heritage means that the warm, rich flavours Morocco, Algeria & Tunisia – tagines and couscous are now a standard and much appreciated part of French cuisine.

Still, you couldn’t call these dishes mouth-burningly hot.  Any more than the curries served in this part of France are,  to the English palate. ‘Careful! It’s lethal’, you’ll be warned, as a tempting plate is set before you.  ‘Erm, thanks.  This is a jolly nice stew’ is not the correct response.

PS, and nothing to do with spices at all.  If the French have not embraced curries, they have fallen in love with ‘le crumble’, and whole recipe books are devoted to the subject.  We were delighted to pass a pâtisserie in Agen the other day, with lots on display. They were helpfully labelled ‘Grumble’.

Foraging: a Mushroom Hunt

Yesterday, members of Atout Fruit went mushrooming.  ‘ You couldn’t have!’, I hear you cry, as several people I mentioned it to did, ‘Autumn’s mushrooming time.  On the whole’.  Well, yes, up to a point.  But our guide Francis, an organic farmer near Chalabre, keeps his family in mushrooms every single week of the year.  He knows where to look.

The hunters set forth

And so he took a group of about 10 of us to the woods.  Where?  I’m not going to tell you that silly.  Somewhere near Lavelanet.  That’s all you need to know.

He told us some of the lore and laws surrounding mushrooming.  That you can gather 5 kilos per person per day in the Aude, but only 3 kilos here in the Ariège .  I wish.  I’m ecstatic generally if I find as many as three mushrooms.  That about 85% of land is in private ownership.  That you may have the right to gather in the Fôret Communale of certain communes if you are resident there. That you must have written permission if a landowner gives you permission to go mushrooming on his land in case the police stop you as you carry your haul home.  Theoretically, you could be stopped as you return from the shops with an extra-big bag of them.

An inedible amonite

Mushrooms in the woods, pushing steadily through the thick thatch of decaying leaves, are surprisingly hard to spot, clinging to the base of tree trunks, bulging through the crust of impacted dry foliage.  We quickly divided into a hit squad of those who seemed to have an eye for it, and others, who like me, were destined to remain in the B team.  Francis showed us edible girolles, gariguettes and russules, and warned against the attractive-but-not-to-be-eaten family of amanites.

Look at the whole thing to identify it correctly

We’d trot over to him with our finds, to be disappointed when he warned us against putting them in the pot, triumphant on those occasions when he said they were ‘delicieux’.  We could guess after a while which ones were delicieux.  The slugs and worms had got there first and eaten little circles out of them.  No matter.  Plenty left for us.

After a couple of hours, we wandered back to his mum’s kitchen (she’d lent her house for the afternoon), got out the textbooks, and discussed our finds.  Not many mushrooms are dangerous, but unfortunately, they do tend to look rather like their edible cousins, and it only takes one……

Some of our haul

The family takes its mushrooms seriously.  The ones they can’t immediately eat are preserved in oil, or dried, and the surplus sold to discerning customers.  We spend a happy time exchanging our favourite ways of preserving, drying and bottling all the fruits of the seasons – this sharing is always my favourite part of an Atout Fruit gathering.

Together, we disposed of a big pot of sautéed mushrooms, the juices sopped up with bread, and helped down with a glass of wine, before reluctantly setting off home, our baskets more or less filled with our afternoon finds.  When I got home, Malcolm and Henri were drinking coffee.  ‘Whaddya mean, you’re not telling where you got those mushrooms?’ Henri grumbled. ‘You’re a right proper Ariègoise you are’.

A mushroomy supper cooking on the stove