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Enough for 8
FEBRUARY 26
A little meal of peace
Sometimes, I rather like noise. The testosterone-fuelled roar of a football match heard from my back garden; the tired and blissfully happy sounds of a crowd singing along at a festival; the swoosh of a barista’s steam wand. But most times I prefer peace and quiet. The sound of snow falling in a forest is more my style – something I have yet to hear this year.
There is quiet food, too. The tastes of peace and quiet, of gentleness and calm. The solitary observance of a bowl of white rice; the peacefulness of a dish of pearl barley; running your fingers through couscous. The thing these have in common is that they are grains or something of that ilk. What is it about these ingredients that makes them so calming? Could it just be that they bring us gastronomically down to earth, show us how pure and simple good eating can be? This is food pretty much stripped of its trappings. It is, after all, the food that many people survive upon.
The peacefulness of grains, their earth tones and the fact that they don’t snap or crunch between the teeth, is what makes them food to eat when we are looking for solace and calm. The fact they are not from a dead animal probably has something to do with it, too.
More and more, I make a main course of what is generally thought of as an accompaniment. Tonight, I make a dish of pale bulgur wheat, cooked with chopped onions, bacon, mushrooms and dill. It is a bit of a hybrid (pork and bulgur are not often found sharing a plate) but it turns out to be one of those ridiculously cheap meals that hits all the right notes.
Bulgur and bacon
I sometimes spoon a little seasoned yogurt – salt, pepper, paprika – over this at the table, stirring it into the grains. But mostly I leave the pilaf as it is, enjoying the warm, homely grains and juicy nuggets of mushroom as they are.
smoked streaky bacon: 200g
onions: 2
olive oil
garlic: 2 cloves
small mushrooms: 250g
bulgur wheat, medium fine: 250g
boiling water from the kettle: 400ml
sprigs of parsley: 3–4
dill: 6 sprigs
butter: 60g
Cut the bacon rashers into short, thick pieces. Peel the onions and slice them thinly. Warm a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a large, shallow pan over a low heat, add the sliced bacon and stir occasionally till the fat has turned pale gold. Peel and finely chop the garlic. Add the onions and garlic to the pan and leave till soft, golden and translucent, stirring from time to time.
Quarter the mushrooms and add them to the softening onions. Leave them to cook for five minutes or so, with the occasional stir. Add the bulgur with a pinch of salt, then pour in the boiling water. Cover tightly, switch off the heat and leave for fifteen minutes.
Roughly chop the parsley leaves and dill. Lift the lid from the pan and add the butter, herbs and a little salt and pepper. Stir till the grains are glossy with butter, then serve.
Enough for 4
FEBRUARY 27
Coconut cream
One of the reasons I have stayed put for more than a decade is because of the way this house floods with light in the mornings. Softened by closed blinds, the sun that comes in from the east wakes you gently, if a little earlier than you would like. This morning, the rooms fill with honeyed light, like a Hammershoi painting. I suddenly realise how much I have missed it these last few weeks.
Sunlight, even on a relatively cold day, has a habit of changing my appetite. Pasta, potatoes and grains feel inappropriate and heavy. The brown food that has provided such homely comfort on the grey days since the year’s start suddenly looks out of place.
Coconut is one of those ingredients that tend to walk hand in hand with sunshine. It smacks, albeit softly, of trips to Kerala and Thailand, of tiny scented pancakes for breakfast on sun-filled terraces, of lime juice and chillies and, of course, sun-tan oil. All of which is about as far as you can get from a February day within a ball’s throw of Arsenal Stadium.
I met coconut first in the form of a neat, sweet Bounty bar, and as a coating, along with raspberry jam, for the tiny, castle-shaped sponges we wrongly called madeleines. Later, it became the principal seasoning of a holiday in Goa and then, a decade on, of the deep, pale-green soups of Thailand. For an ingredient of which I am not particularly fond, the flesh of the coconut is laden with happy memories.
The finely desiccated coconut that covered my childhood like snowflakes, on everything from jelly mushrooms to fairy cakes and marshmallows, has never set foot in my adult kitchen. It is a flavour I seem to have left behind, like a school blazer that no longer fits. I keep coconut in two forms: as a can of creamy, brilliant-white milk for soups and curries and as coconut cream, a thicker, more concentrated version made from the top of the milk. This latter form is useful when you want the flavour of the nut without introducing too much liquid. Spiked with ground cumin, cardamom and turmeric, it makes a simple marinade for prawns or chicken. It comes in jars and small cans, like the mixers on the drinks trolley of a plane, and is not to be confused with ‘cream of coconut’ whose principal use is in a rum-spiked piña colada.
Coconut cream is the thick, almost paste-like gloop that rises to the top of the pot when coconut milk is produced. You can make your own by adding water to shredded, fresh coconut, bringing it to the boil and letting it cool. On refrigeration, the cream will rise and can be scooped off.
As well as introducing a nutty sweetness, coconut cream works as a balm. I often add the contents of a small can to knock the edge off an exceptionally spicy lamb curry, or indeed to any dish in which I have misjudged the chilli quotient and left everyone breaking out in a sweat.
Chicken wings with coconut cream
You could serve this with plenty of the brick-red, coconut-scented sauce and some steamed rice, but I prefer to reduce the sauce over a high heat, stirring almost continuously to prevent it sticking to the pan, till it is thick enough to coat the chicken wings.
groundnut oil: 2 tablespoons
chicken wings: 16 (or 12 large ones)
fresh ginger: a 60g knob
garlic: 2 large cloves
ground chilli: half a teaspoon
ground turmeric: half a teaspoon
ground coriander: a teaspoon
small ‘new’ potatoes: 250g
chopped tomatoes: a 400g can
coconut cream: up to 320ml
coriander leaves: a small handful
Warm the oil in a deep frying pan. Season the chicken wings with salt and pepper, add to the pan and leave them to colour on both sides. Remove to a plate once they are golden brown.
Peel the ginger and garlic and blitz them to a rough pulp in a food processor. Blend in the ground chilli, turmeric and coriander. Cut the potatoes into thin ‘coins’. Return the empty chicken pan to a moderate heat and add the spice mix from the processor. Once it starts to sizzle and its fragrance rises, add the potatoes and 200ml water. Continue cooking, with the occasional stir, for ten minutes or until the potatoes are approaching tenderness. Stir in the tomatoes, bring to the boil and simmer for five minutes.
Pour in the coconut cream (start with 160ml, then add more as you wish). Season with salt, stir well, return the chicken and any juices on the plate to the pan and leave to simmer for fifteen to twenty minutes, allowing time for the liquid to reduce a little. Turn up the heat and, stirring almost continuously, let the sauce bubble till it has thickened considerably. Scrape away at the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon as you go to stop the sauce sticking. It should be thick and should easily coat the chicken. Stir in a little chopped coriander, if you wish.
Serve in shallow bowls or deep plates and, being best eaten somewhat messily with the hands, provide something for everyone to wipe their fingers with.
Enough for 4
FEBRUARY 28
Hand to mouth
I have always regarded mopping food from my plate with a piece of bread as one of life’s better moments. No doubt it is made twice as enjoyable by the fact I was forbidden from doing it as a child. Those last few puddles of sauce sponged up with anything from a wodge of floury bap to a jagged shard of warm pitta form a natural conclusion to my day’s cooking, a form of delicious closure. Given half the chance, I would be happy to transfer an entire meal from plate to mouth in pieces of warm bread.
Any soft dough, flat or bun-like, can be used to scoop sloppy, spicy or stew-like things from our plates. Yes, the bread adds substance to our supper, but the real point – for me at least – is the tactile pleasure to be had from holding the hot sauce in a piece of damp bread. It feels as good as it tastes. More than just an edible receptacle with which to trap our food, the bread, saturated with juices, becomes part of the dish – more than you can say for a knife and fork.
I sometimes make flatbreads at home, the kind of slipper-shaped breads you can split and stuff, or tear into rough pieces to dunk into taramasalata, puréed chickpeas or chunkily textured tomato sauce. They are perhaps my favourite of all for cleaning my plate. The most straightforward is a flour, yeast and water dough rolled into small ovals and baked. They often leave the oven crisp, so in order to make them soft enough to wipe a plate, I cover the warm breads with a tea towel, which leaves them suitably pliable.
Today I made a sort of gloopy stew with chickpeas and tomatoes, sharpened with pickled lemon, leaving them to cook long enough to make the juices thick and rich. To introduce a bit more depth, I roasted the tomatoes first, tossed around with a chopped ripe pepper and a few cumin seeds, adding a deceptively smoky quality. Just the stuff for a bit of bread.
Chickpeas with tomatoes and harissa
A vegetable-based stew to serve with rice or bread.
tomatoes: 800g
red peppers: about 500g
olive oil: 110ml
red wine vinegar: 3 tablespoons
cumin seeds: a teaspoon
chickpeas: two 400g cans
preserved lemons: 60g
harissa paste: a teaspoon
basil leaves: a handful
soft, Middle Eastern-style bread, to serve
Set the oven at 200°C/Gas 6. Remove the tomatoes from their stalks, cut each into six and put them in a baking dish. Cut the peppers in half, tear out their stalks and seeds, cut the flesh into short chunks, then add to the tomatoes.
Add 75ml of the oil, plus the vinegar, cumin seeds and a generous grinding of black pepper and sea salt. Roast for fifty minutes to an hour, until the peppers are tender and the tomatoes are soft and juicy. If the edges have caught slightly, then all to the good.
Transfer the tomatoes and peppers from the baking dish to a saucepan. Drain the chickpeas of their canning liquor and rinse them under the cold tap. Mix the drained chickpeas with the tomatoes and peppers.
Chop the preserved lemon, discarding the soft inner pulp. Stir the harissa, chopped lemon and remaining olive oil into the chickpeas, place the pan over a moderate heat and leave to simmer for ten minutes or so, till it is thoroughly hot and juicy. Season with salt and coarse black pepper.
Fold the basil leaves, whole, into the mixture, letting them wilt in the heat. Transfer to a serving dish and serve with warm bread.
Enough to serve 4, generously, as a main course
A spurtle, some oats and a beautiful bowl
I have been using my spurtle the wrong way round. This came to light last year, when I took a porridge-making lesson with Ian Bishop in Carrbridge, Scotland. This morning, under a beautiful, grey-white winter sky, Ian’s softly spoken words come back to me.
A spurtle, spirtle, theevil or, as it used to be known in Shetland, gruel-tree, is a thick wooden stick purely for stirring porridge in its pan, and seems like one piece of kit too many, especially to someone with a pathological dislike of unnecessary gadgets. But the gentle sound of warm oats and water being stirred in a thick pan on a freezing morning is a noise of ancient comfort, like the soft crackle of an open fire in an old hearth. I have loved porridge since I was a boy, but my mother made it with milk and sugar whereas I make mine with water and salt.
Ian taught me to use three cups of water to one of pinhead oats. I use the same oats as him now, an organically grown medium oatmeal, and only slightly less salt. He insisted, politely, on a teaspoon of salt to a cup of oats, and I follow his lead, aware that it is almost my entire salt ration for the day. Just as it does in a batch of flapjacks, the salt brings out an almost toasted flavour in the oats. I stir them clockwise only, lest the devil get me, and embellish them with cream and a dark berry jam such as blackcurrant, just as my teacher does.
A bowl of porridge is a quiet breakfast (no snap, crackle or pop) that sets me up for the day. I feel a sense of calm and wellbeing after a breakfast of porridge. I should add that mine now comes in a wooden bowl. I regard my porridge bowls as some of the most beautiful items in my kitchen. They are made by Guy Kerry at his croft in the Black Isle, with ash wood from a tree blown down in a storm.
The recipe is straightforward, and I owe it entirely to Ian. I bring three cups of water to the boil, pour in a cup of medium pinhead oatmeal in a steady flow (let it fall in a steady rain, is how Marian McNeill puts it in The Scots Kitchen), stirring all the time in a clockwise direction. It is done in five minutes, no longer, a scant teaspoon of salt added in the last minute of cooking. As it slides into the wooden porridge bowls, I spoon in a smudge of damson or blackcurrant jam and, if there is any around, some cold single or double cream, avoiding the temptation to write my initials with maple syrup. Tradition prefers us to stand. I hope that leaning against the kitchen sink isn’t going to induce the wrath of the devil.
March (#ulink_2cc09d48-101f-5d5e-b037-488fc79947a5)
MARCH 2
The cast-iron casserole
A casserole is a cooking vessel rather than the food cooked in it. Nevertheless, the word has come to mean a thick, sloppy stew cooked in a covered pot. I’m no pedant and that is fine by me. Once under the ownership of the frugal home cook, such recipes are now standard gastropub fare, and in particular those involving lamb shanks.
The shank, no longer the cheapest of meats, is the hard-working cut from the top of the front leg. The muscles and sinews of the shank can soften or tighten as the mood takes them, so it is best cooked slowly, in liquid, and in a low oven. Frustratingly, the flesh can fall easily from the bone or not, so exact timing in a recipe is almost impossible. They may need an hour or three. Of course, modern cooks demand a recipe that is done in the time it states, but with the lamb shank we must enter a different mindset, one where something is done when it feels like it, not when a recipe says it should be.
Size isn’t necessarily an issue, but the smaller the shank, the quicker it may come to tenderness. No guarantees though; I have met the odd tough little bugger before now. Covering with a lid or foil will help the meat to steam as well as bake, which should encourage it down the path towards tenderness. But the most likely way to guarantee your meat falling from the bone in a sinewy, velvety mound is to sink it in plenty of liquid – stock, wine, cider, whatever. Just keep the meat covered. This is no mean feat with a large shank, so regular turning during cooking is essential to keep as much of the flesh covered for as long as possible.
I have several casseroles – by which I mean the pots, not their edible contents. A couple are scarred from bean-based recipes forgotten in the oven (chickpeas leave bubblewrap-type rings on the base; cannellini the sort of snow you get on an untuned television screen), whilst many have cream or grey linings that have taken on the hue of red wine sauce. That’ll be boeuf bourguignon, or perhaps oxtail. There is a beautifully understated matt-black one, solid cast iron, which I use for stock and occasionally for a breadcrumb-topped stew. If I were a different sort of cook, it would have been used like those in Castelnaudary, the French home of cassoulet, with its bits of pork, goose and beans. But mine gets used for macaroni cheese, chicken casserole with tarragon and potatoes and, today, a heart-warming dish of lamb shanks cooked with thyme, garlic, onions and black-eyed beans, or other beans if you wish. The sort of recipe that looks as if it took days to make, that warms like no other and makes you feel like a real cook. Whatever one of those may be.
Lamb shanks with black-eyed beans
I say black-eyed beans, but you could use haricot beans or chickpeas if that is what you have to hand.
dried black-eyed beans: 500g
bay leaves: 2
olive oil
lamb shanks: 4
onions: 3
thyme: 4 small sprigs
garlic: 4 plump cloves, finely sliced
plain flour: 4 lightly heaped tablespoons
stock or, at a push, water: 750ml
For the crust:
fresh white breadcrumbs: 150g
