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orange juice – 50ml
orange zest – 2 teaspoons
cranberries, fresh or frozen – 100g
Toast the fennel seeds for a couple of minutes in a dry frying pan, then tip them into a large mixing bowl. Put the turkey mince, chilli flakes and breadcrumbs into the bowl, then coarsely grate in the lardo. Season generously with both salt and black pepper, then mix thoroughly.
Shape the stuffing mixture into 8 large balls, then place them on a tray and refrigerate for twenty-five minutes. Set the oven at 180°C/Gas 4.
To make the sauce, put the cranberry jelly or sauce into a small saucepan and place over a moderate heat, then add the orange juice and zest and the cranberries and bring to the boil. Turn down the heat so the mixture simmers gently and leave for five or six minutes, until the berries have softened a little. You should be able to squash them easily between thumb and forefinger. Remove from the heat and leave to settle.
Warm the olive oil in a shallow pan and fry the stuffing balls, moving them round as each side browns, until they are golden brown all over. Transfer the balls to a baking dish, sitting them snugly together, then spoon over the cranberry sauce. Bake for thirty minutes.
Pears, clove and orange granita
Carried away with their quiet beauty, I seem to have bought rather a lot of pears. I do this with peaches too. And avocados. Damsons as well. Fruits or vegetables caught at a perfect moment. Sometimes, I simply cannot resist. (We will be feasting on pears for a week.)
Today, a refreshing dessert, scented with sweet spices. The timing is tricky, with pears often taking anything from fifteen to fifty minutes to soften. I check them regularly with a skewer as they cook. Pears are often at their most delicious when on the edge of collapse. So tender they require a careful hand to transfer them to the serving plate.
Serves 4
orange juice – 1 litre
caster sugar – 100g
cloves – 4
half a cinnamon stick
pears, large – 2
Pour the orange juice into a non-reactive saucepan, add the caster sugar, place over a moderate heat and leave until the sugar has dissolved, stirring occasionally. Add the cloves and cinnamon stick and bring almost to the boil.
Peel the pears, slice each one in half from stem to base, then scoop out the cores using a teaspoon or, if you have one, a melon baller. Lower the pears into the juice in the pan and simmer gently until soft. Ripe pears will take about twenty minutes, hard fruit considerably longer. They are ready when they will easily take the point of a knife or skewer.
Lift the pears carefully from the pan with a draining spoon and place on a plate. Spoon over a little of the orange juice to keep them moist, then cover and refrigerate.
Chill the seasoned juice as quickly as possible. (Pouring the juice into a bowl, then resting it in a large bowl of ice cubes will speed up matters.) When the juice is cold, remove the cloves and cinnamon, pour into a shallow plastic freezer box and freeze for at least four hours.
When the juice is almost frozen, pull the tines of a table fork through it, roughing up the surface, then digging a little deeper, making large ice crystals in the process. Take care not to mash the crystals too much, leaving them as large as possible. Put the granita back into the freezer.
To serve, put a pear half on each dessert plate or shallow dish, pile some of the granita into the centre and serve immediately. You should have enough granita over for the next day.
5 NOVEMBER
Fire and baked pears
We have been lighting fires around this time for centuries. Since ancient times Celtic people have gathered around bonfires on October 31 and November 1 to celebrate Samhain, the end of the harvest and the beginning of winter. We burn candles in hollowed-out pumpkins on All Hallows, and since 1605 we have celebrated the failure of Guy Fawkes’s attempt to blow up the House of Lords and the protestant King James by lighting fires and setting off fireworks.
The celebrations have changed since I was a kid. Hallowe’en has turned into a pantomime of extortion and petty vandalism dressed up as ‘Trick or Treat’. The rickety piles of branches that stood quietly throughout the countryside, ready to be lit on November 5, are fewer. The back-garden firework parties have very much disappeared too. Spectacular displays and vast communal bonfires are now more organised and often run by local councils and bonfire societies. Traditional effigies are still displayed and burned, occasionally of Pope Paul V, head of the Catholic Church in the time of Guy Fawkes, but more often than not it is images of contemporary villains, Savile, Trump and Farage, which we now set alight. (There are so many I don’t know which to choose.)
The climate seems different too. The remains of childhood fireworks, black with soot, were regularly rescued from spiky grass white with frost. Yet I can’t remember the last time frost coincided with Bonfire Night.
In my part of London the fireworks start mid-afternoon. Barely visible against the milky grey sky, their startling beauty is wasted. At twilight, the cascades of pink, silver and green explode high above, sometimes to cheers of delight. I have never quite understood the draw of fireworks, it all seems a bit of a waste of money to me, but a bonfire is a different matter. The smell and crackle of dry twigs, the flames, smoke and glowing embers have always held a certain magic for me, and I am never happier than when there is a fire in the hearth.
There is no party tonight, no fire lit in the garden, just the occasional glances at a particularly extravagant cascade of lights over the East End. Instead, we sit round the fire eating fat Italian sausages, creamed leeks and beans, and to follow, a bowl of ice cream with searingly hot marmalade pears, whose glowing bittersweet sauce tastes like cinder toffee.
Leeks, beans and Italian sausage
This is one of those good-natured recipes that can be multiplied successfully for large parties, or made earlier and reheated as necessary.
Serves 2
leeks, medium – 3
butter – 30g
water – 100ml
olive oil – 2 tablespoons, or a little pork fat
plump sausages – 4 (400g)
vegetable stock – 250ml
cannellini or haricot beans – 1 × 400g tinned
parsley, chopped – a handful
Cut the leeks into rounds about 1cm in length and wash them in plenty of cold water. Bring the butter and water to the boil in a wide pan with a lid, then add the leeks. Cover with a piece of greaseproof paper, or baking parchment, and a lid. The paper will encourage the leeks to steam rather than fry.
Warm the oil or a little pork fat in a frying pan and cook the sausages, slowly, over a moderate heat. Let them brown nicely on all sides.
Leave the leeks to cook for eight or nine minutes, until they are tender enough to take the point of a skewer with little pressure. Pour the vegetable stock into the pan and continue cooking for two minutes, then tip the leeks and their cooking liquor into a blender and process until almost smooth. (It is important not to fill the blender jug more than halfway. You may need to do this in more than one batch.)
Return the leeks to the pan, then drain and rinse the beans and fold them into the leeks. Stir in the parsley, and spoon on to plates with the sausages.
Marmalade pears with vanilla ice cream
This truly gorgeous recipe is, I suppose, a new take on my baked pears with Marsala (Tender, Volume II) but with a deep, syrupy bitter-sweetness, reminiscent of old-fashioned black treacle toffee. The hot, translucent pears and the glossy apple and marmalade sauce are wonderful with vanilla ice cream. There is a point, after about forty-five minutes, when you need to watch the progress of the sauce carefully, lest it turn to toffee. A non-stick roasting pan is essential.
Serves 4
pears – 3 medium
apple juice – 200ml
orange marmalade – 150g
Marsala, sweet or dry – 1 tablespoon
honey – 1 heaped tablespoon
vanilla ice cream, to serve – 8 scoops
Set the oven at 190°C/Gas 5. Peel the pears (I think you should because the skin can be tough, but it is up to you), cut them in half, and scoop out their cores. Cut each half into three, then place them in a non-stick roasting tin. In a small saucepan, bring the apple juice, marmalade, Marsala and honey to the boil, then remove from the heat and pour over the pears.
Bake the pears in the preheated oven for twenty minutes, then turn them over. At this point they will look decidedly uninteresting, but carry on anyway. Let the pears bake for a further twenty minutes, then watch them carefully. The sauce will be bubbling now, the colour of amber and rising up the pears, almost covering them. Test them for tenderness – a small knife should slide through them effortlessly. They should be translucent and butter-soft. If they aren’t quite ready or if the sauce isn’t syrupy, give them a further five minutes.
Let them rest for five minutes. Serve them with the vanilla ice cream.
6 NOVEMBER
Making gnudi
I sweep up the leaves, most of which I recognise. My parents’ gift of The Observer Book of Trees was clearly not lost on me. There are those of the fig, like giants’ hands; the feather-like golden robinia; the oval greengage and the smaller Ouillins gage, whose tiny leaflets are brown-freckled, like its fruit. There are the green leaves of the Doyenne du Comice pear, with their lichen-like splodges of rust, and those of the Discovery apple that somehow manage to be larger than its fruit. The honeysuckles are crisp already, like the tiny pieces of pork crackling I used to find in a bowl on the butcher’s counter as a kid. And the horse-chestnuts have already found their way over the rooftops from the lane in front of the house. Heaven knows how. Others will stay put for a while – those of the jasmine and rose and white lacecap hydrangeas.
Sweeping the leaves is a thankless task – there will be just as many tomorrow. But better that than the boredom of a lawn. They go into net sacks to rot down. Soaking them, just occasionally with the watering can, helps to speed up the process. Once crumbly, they will be put on to the beds. Leafmould is treasure to a gardener, a bag of gold with which to treat his plants. There is a little science to it, and a wee bit of gardener’s law. Hornbeam, oak and birch, lime and cherry leaves will rot down within eighteen months; horse-chestnut, beech, magnolia, hawthorn, maple and sycamore will take longer because of their high fibre content. A shredder would speed up the composting process, but I really don’t have the room.
After Christmas, there will be the tree to get rid of. Pines and conifers take a good couple of years to rot down and so shouldn’t be mixed with the others. They need to be left in the open and turned regularly with a garden fork. That done, they are best used only to mulch other acid-loving plants such as heather. Having not an inch of garden to spare, it might be more prudent to leave my tree out for the council, who collect and compost them for us.
It is too early, but I have been mulling over what to give the vegetarians for Christmas lunch when we are tucking into our grilled scallops. (I know it’s going to be that because I did it last year, with pancetta and a smooth pea purée, and everyone loved its lightness and savour.) The vague plan is to serve a light pasta dish first, the little pillows of ricotta and Parmesan known as gnudi. My vegetarian friends are not hardcore, so I don’t have to worry about mixing up their Parmesan with my Parmesan.
The gnudi take minutes to make, but absolutely must be dried on a tray in the fridge overnight, snuggled down in a deep snowdrift of fine cornmeal. Skip that stage (always a temptation) and they will dissolve in the cooking water. You will have no gnudi, no dinner. I choose them because they are light, simple and special. They are not hard to make but they do require a light hand. I make them myself because I enjoy shaping them and lowering the flattened balls into the cornmeal almost more than anything else, and anyway, you can’t buy a decent commercial version of them for love nor money.
Gnudi require the hands of an angel. You must treat the mixture of fresh, white ricotta and grated Parmesan as delicately as if it were a Christmas bauble, which in this case I suppose it is. This is cooking with the utmost respect and care, and I love it.
The usual accompanying sauce is something with cheese and cream, though I have had others. My thought is that such a recipe is too rich and heavy for purpose, so I am keen to have a go at something else. In my head are ideas for both a creamy spinach sauce and a sort of avocado sauce, made with lemons, basil and olive oil. The Hass variety of avocado – the one with the crocodile skin – is at its best in the winter. I shall make the gnudi today and have a go at the sauce tomorrow.
Gnudi
My heart sinks when I see a recipe that takes two days, but this is an exception. We are talking minutes of work rather than hours. My gnudi recipe is based on that of the wonderful April Bloomfield, whose own version has become a permanent and much-loved part of her menu at the Spotted Pig in New York. Mine have a little more Parmesan to ricotta than is the norm, and my impatience means they get only twenty-four hours in the fridge. April leaves hers for at least thirty-six (and in the quest for perfection, I’m sure she’s right).
Makes 20 small gnudi, serves 4
ricotta – 250g
a little nutmeg
Parmesan – 40g
fine semolina – 250g or more
Put the ricotta into a bowl. Grate a little nutmeg finely over, then add a very little salt. Grate the Parmesan finely and gently stir in. Have a baking sheet ready, covered with a thick layer of the semolina.
Using a teaspoon, scoop up a generous heap of mixture and make it into a small ball, rolling it in your hands. (A dusting of semolina on your hands will help.) You can leave the gnudi round if you like, but I prefer to press them into a slightly oval shape. Drop the ball on to the semolina-lined tray, then roll it back and forth until it is coated. Continue with the rest of the mixture. You will have roughly 20 little gnudi.
Once they are all rolled, shake the remaining semolina over them, then put the tray in the fridge. Don’t be tempted to cover them. Leave overnight.
None of this solves our own dinner situation. So we go out. I feel somewhat blessed (not to say a wee bit smug) that so many good restaurants seem to be opening up on my doorstep. A dozen cracking places to spend an evening and all within walking distance.
7 NOVEMBER
A trip to the forest, and those gnudi
A couple of Novembers ago I was asked to choose the Christmas tree for Trafalgar Square. Well, I helped. We filmed the occasion for television. We had taken the train to Flåm, in Norway, a small village and port at the end of Sognefjord, the world’s deepest fjord. It is easy to worship this landscape, with its crags, forests and crashing waterfalls. By turns lush with forest, or stark in tones of charcoal, grey and white, it is both somehow melancholy and invigorating. The latter especially when you poke your head (stupidly) out of the carriage window and feel the bite of icy air on your face.
By the time we got to Myrdal snow had started to fall. The first that year, each flake as soft and white as goose fat. As the little train arrived in Flåm, the snow turned to heavy, wretched sleet. The crew unpacked their kit with rapidly numbing fingers and filmed for what seemed like hours. They filmed me trudging endlessly through the driving sleet; soaked through to the skin; slipping clumsily on the icy track; barely able to see two feet in front of me; my lips almost unable to move with cold. But mostly they filmed me getting quietly more and more pissed off. Snow is one thing. But driving sleet, especially when you wear glasses, is another thing altogether. I should add that none of that footage ever saw the light of day. Such are the joys of television.
Next morning, we woke to find most of the snow gone, the sun peeping shyly over the mountains, the sky as clear as iced water. We set off for the forest, to find the rangers and, hopefully, our tree. There is nothing accidental about choosing The Tree. You don’t just stumble upon it and think, ‘Oh, that’ll do for Trafalgar Square.’ This is an important tree, an annual gift from the people of Norway each year since 1947, a token of gratitude for our support during the Second World War. Possible candidates are marked when little more than saplings, then monitored for decades. The tree, a Norway spruce, must not be crowded, so lesser examples that get too close are removed, allowing the chosen tree’s branches access to even light, the chance for all sides to grow symmetrically, its trunk to grow straight. As we walk through the forest we spot the trees that might grace Trafalgar Square in 2030 or 2035.
‘Which one do you think is best?’ I am asked. We pick one of the right age, height and girth. It’s a tree casting session. I am given a choice from three or four that have been shortlisted, having been spotted like child prodigies and nurtured towards stardom. The chosen fir has been growing for about seventy years – this we check by drilling a long, pencil-thin sample from its trunk, as a cheesemaker might check the blueing progress of a truckle of Stilton. We count the growth rings one by one.
Next, there follows a phone call to the mayor for permission – a courtesy – then the rangers set about felling. Next time I see it, on the first Thursday in December, the vast tree has been shipped and manoeuvred into position outside the National Gallery and carols are being sung around it by the choir from St-Martin-in-the-Fields, barely a cassock’s throw away. The Norwegian Ambassador is there, as are the mayors of Oslo and Westminster. The tree is lit in traditional Norwegian style, with five hundred simple white lights, its base now garlanded, delightfully, with poems specially commissioned by the Poetry Society.
A few weeks later, just before Twelfth Night, my beloved tree is removed, chipped and composted.
And two sauces for the gnudi
I rescue yesterday’s gnudi from the fridge. I pat them, tenderly, to check their firmness.
Watercress and avocado pesto
avocados, ripe – 2
a lemon
pine kernels – 50g
basil leaves – a handful (about 10g)
olive oil – about 8–10 tablespoons
watercress – 50g
Parmesan (if you wish. I don’t.)
gnudi – 20, small
Halve, stone and peel the avocados. Halve and juice the lemon. Put the pine nuts into a food processor and blend briefly, until they are coarsely crushed, then add the avocados and basil leaves and process, adding as much olive oil and lemon as you need to produce a loose, bright green paste.
Wash the watercress and remove any tough stalks. Grate the Parmesan finely if you are using it.
Bring a pan of water to the boil, deep and generously salted, as you would to cook pasta. Carefully lower the gnudi, a few at a time, into the boiling water. When the balls float to the surface they are ready. This is generally between three and five minutes.
Add the watercress to the sauce, folding it gently through the green paste, then spoon into a serving dish. Lift the gnudi from the water with a draining spoon, place them on the avocado sauce and serve, should you wish, with grated Parmesan on the side.
Spinach and pecorino
