Mission: Cook! (11 page)

In
a large, heavy saucepan, heat the butter and oil over medium-high heat. Add the onions and cook for 10 to 12 minutes until they are softened and beginning to brown. Add the garlic, sugar, and thyme, and continue cooking over medium heat for 30 to 35 minutes until the onions are well browned, stirring frequently. Add the flour as a thickener. Pour in the white wine to deglaze the pan. Add the broth, brandy, if you desire, and salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a gentle boil, reduce the heat, and then simmer for 25 minutes.

Turn on the broiler in the oven. Smash the garlic clove and rub on the inside of each of the oven-safe crocks. Spoon the soup into the crocks. Lay a slice of toasted bread on the surface of each bowl of soup, then sprinkle 2 ounces of grated cheese on top of each slice. Melt and brown the cheese under the broiler. Serve immediately.

In
a mixing bowl, combine all the salsa ingredients and let the salsa sit in the refrigerator to chill.

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

In a bowl, mix together all the crab cake ingredients except the crabmeat and bread crumbs, then add the crabmeat and the crumbs. Try not to break down the lump crabmeat; leave it in chunks. Form the crab mixture into 3½- to 4-ounce cakes. Place a sauté pan on the stove to get hot and pour 2 to 3 ounces canola oil in the pan. Place the crab cakes into the pan; brown on both sides, turning carefully. Transfer the crab cakes to a cookie sheet and place in the preheated oven. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes.

PRESENTATION

Place a crab cake in the center of each plate. Top with a lemon wedge. The mango salsa should be spooned to one side of the plate, with two strands of whole chives on the other side.

To
make the crust, sift the flour and salt into a bowl. Add the shortening and cut in with a pastry blender until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. With a fork, spoon in just enough ice water to bind the dough. Gather the dough into a ball.

On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough about
¹
/
₈
inch thick. Transfer to a 9-inch pie pan and trim the edge to leave a ½-inch overhang.

Fold the overhang under and crimp the edge. Refrigerate the pie shell for at least 20 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Prick the dough all over with a fork to prevent bubbling up of the empty crust. Line with crumpled wax paper and fill with pie weights or dried beans (referred to as “blind baking”). Bake for 12 minutes. Remove the paper and
weights or beans, and continue baking until golden, 6 to 8 minutes more, to dry out the base.

To make the pie filling, in a saucepan, combine the lemon zest and juice, 1 cup of the cold water, ½ cup sugar, and the butter. Bring the mixture to a boil over low heat.

Meanwhile, in a mixing bowl, dissolve the cornstarch in the remaining 1 tablespoon cold water. Add the 3 egg yolks and combine.

Add the egg yolk mixture to the lemon mixture on the stove and return to a boil, whisking continuously until the mixture thickens (you don't want scrambled eggs), about 5 minutes.

Cover the surface of the lemon filling with wax paper to prevent a skin from forming and let cool.

To make the meringue, using an electric mixer, beat the 3 egg whites with the salt and cream of tartar until they hold stiff peaks. Add the remaining 6 tablespoons sugar and beat until glossy.

Spoon the lemon mixture into the pie shell and spread it level. Spoon the meringue on top, smoothing it up to the edge of the crust to seal. Bake until golden, 12 to 15 minutes.

Remove
the heads from the shrimp and peel away the shells, reserving the heads and shells for the stock.

Heat the oil in a large saucepan, and cook the peeled shrimp just until they begin to turn pink, then remove them to a utility platter and chill in the refrigerator. Add the shrimp heads and shells to the same pan, and cook over high heat, stirring frequently, until they start to brown. Reduce the heat to medium, add the onions, carrot, and celery, and fry gently, stirring occasionally, for about 5 minutes until the onions start to soften.

Add the water, lemon juice, tomato paste, and bouquet garni. Bring the broth to a boil, then reduce the heat, cover, and simmer gently for 25 minutes. Strain the broth through a sieve.

Melt the butter in a heavy saucepan over medium heat. Stir in the flour to make a roux, and cook until just golden, stirring occasionally. Add the brandy and gradually pour in about half of the shrimp broth, whisking vigorously until smooth, then whisk in the remaining liquid. Season with salt, if necessary, and white pepper. Reduce the heat, cover, and simmer for 5 minutes, stirring frequently.

Strain the soup into a clean saucepan and add the cream. Then stir in most of the shrimp (reserving a few for garnish) and cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until hot. Serve at once, garnished with the reserved shrimp and a little extra lemon juice on the surface of the soup.

Delicious days with Mum and Dad and the
Tale of the Prince and the Wok

W
HEN I WAS A CHILD, I USED TO ACCOMPANY MY MOTHER TO TESCO,
our local chain food market, to shop for groceries, and it was always a neat experience. When a Brit tells you he's about to “nip down the shops,” he's probably heading for a Tesco. Marvelous stores for the British working family, home of the Oxo cube, frozen mince pies, Bird's custard, Crosse & Blackwell's Branston Pickle, Weetabix cereals, and Yorkshire pudding mix in a box. I got to pick out foods I liked, and we inevitably stopped at Wimpy's to grab a Wimpy Burger on the way home. (In fact, not that long ago, I was on the Isle of Malta, and was invited to be one of the very first customers of the first Wimpy's on that island. Having that burger again was like meeting a long-lost friend.) Nowadays, I
“shop” with some of the finest purveyors in the business, and when I want a really good snack I go and see my friend Michel Richard at Citronelle in Washington, D.C., and maybe have a Monte Cristo on his freshly baked marble rye (he is possibly the best baker in the world—and he
will
object to the word “possibly”) with razor-thin slices of ham and turkey, Manchego cheese, and caramelized shallots. But those early pleasurable impressions never leave you.

Once I had entered the Navy at fifteen, I considered myself an adult, and I expanded my horizons in terms of continuing culinary self-education. As I was being schooled in the basics of cooking in the Navy, I was also able to wander farther afield in my search for inspiration. It wasn't long before I made my way to London and Harrods' Food Hall.

Harrods is unlike any store on the planet. Its founding predates the reign of Queen Victoria, and it takes up about a million square feet in a sedentary neighborhood in Knightsbridge. Its Latin motto is
Omnia Omnibus Ubique
—“All Things, for All People, Everywhere”—and it is filled wall to wall with every imaginable item of any possible interest to any shopper, anywhere. If you ever have the pleasure of visiting it, you will agree that it lives up to its billing as the number one department store in the world.

For a young chef, wandering the legendary Food Hall at Harrods is like walking inside a virtual food encyclopedia. Its vaulted ceilings tower over a staggering collection of foodstuffs, and I used to stalk through those aisles endlessly. I have to admit to being a bit overwhelmed at first, but then I began to understand the organization of the place and know my way around and soon felt right at home. The counter displays are phenomenal. I saw breads in shapes and sizes I'd never imagined, from French baguettes and é
pées
to multicolored braided loaves of sourdough, pumpernickel, and rye to brioches and focaccias layered with caramelized onions, roasted peppers, dates, or figs. I saw and sampled the cheeses of the world: Camembert, Brie, Gruyère, Edam and Gouda, Sage Darby, Parmigiano-Reggiano, Port Salut, and every variation on the theme of Cheddar imaginable, including one infused with claret that reminded me of red-veined marble.

I loved the charcuterie displays: terrines and pâtés; salamis, sausages, and
boudins
of every description; hams from America, Spain, and Italy as well as the English countryside. I saw my first prosciutto here. The seafood counters featured a large display of fish—fresh, smoked, and cured—lobsters, langoustines, and clams, and so many oysters that I imagined that they must have had bucketsful of pearls piled up in the basement. Harrods has its own butcher shop, stacked with beautiful cuts of beef, pork, veal, and poultry, and they
gladly break down fresh rabbits, duck, grouse, or pheasant to order. There are miles of salads, pickles, and chutneys, nuts from every corner of the Earth, coffee beans, every kind of tea, every kind of ice cream, and every kind of everything else from Christmas puddings to caviar. Harrods Food Hall has its own
patisserie
and its own chocolate confectioners, and both are madly creative.

My special fascination was the wedding cakes display. They laid out models of cakes built out of Styrofoam that showcased the most inventive designs I have ever seen, and I could watch master craftsmen actually bringing these designs to life in the bakery. I still have a book on the art of cake decorating from Harrods that I page through to this day.

There are moments in your life when taste, variety, presentation, tradition, and atmosphere all come together to create perfect pleasure at the table, which thought brings immediately to mind the time that I decided to take my mother to high tea at Harrods.

Please bear in mind, everything is bigger, cleaner, and nicer at Harrods. Mother and I made our way in from Salisbury to Knightsbridge, and strolled through floor after magnificent floor together on our way to the food levels. From the standpoint of consumer goods, for an afternoon I was able to lay the world at my mother's feet. We window-shopped past the latest fashions from Milan and Paris, fine linens and woolens, exquisite glass and crystal, jewelry and cosmetics, magnificent furniture pieces, the most modern appliances, and the most amazing antiques and paintings. My mom's eyes were wide as saucers. We weren't at Tesco anymore.

Then we stopped in for tea. If the way to an English man's soul is through Sunday dinner, the way to an English woman's is through tea. Every available surface of the tearoom was layered with crystal, white linen, china, and silver. The servers wore clean white gloves, and the service itself was even crisper and cleaner. Multitiered silver trays bore all of the traditional dainties and more. We feasted on delicate sandwiches filled with smoked Scottish salmon, egg mayonnaise with watercress, cucumber with cream cheese, creamy chicken salad with onion marmalade, and ham with just a whisper of mustard. The pastries were beautiful: Viennese swirls, miniature napoleons, colorful fruit tarts, and cookies dotted with fruit jellies. The crumpets were pillowy, the scones were hot out of the oven, filled with raisins and apples and paired with clotted cream from Devonshire, creamery butter, and every manner of preserves. We had stepped off of the busy streets of London into a timeless space measured out in sweet sips of warming, milky tea and bite after bite of pure pleasure, and we made an everlasting memory.

I maintain that there are very few hard-and-fast rules in the culinary world, but one of the few to which I subscribe is that you must seek and find pleasure in the making and eating of food. Now, I don't want to tell you how to live your life, but I cannot stress the following more strongly:

TAKE YOUR MOTHER TO AFTERNOON TEA.

To
make the pie filling, mix the nuts, dried and candied fruit, suet, citrus zest and juice, brown sugar, apples, and spices in a bowl. Stir in the brandy. Cover and leave in a cool place for 2 days.

To make the crust, sift the flour and confectioners' sugar into a bowl. Cut in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

Add the orange zest. Stir in just enough orange juice to bind. Gather into a ball, wrap in wax paper, and refrigerate for at least 20 minutes.

To assemble the “pies,” preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Grease 3 or 4 muffin pans, depending on the number of muffins each will hold. Beat together the cream cheese and granulated sugar. Roll out the piecrust dough ¼ inch thick. (You will be cutting out 72 rounds in total, for top and bottom crusts.) With a fluted pastry cutter, stamp out three dozen (36) 3-inch rounds. Transfer these rounds to the muffin pans. Fill halfway with mincemeat. Top with a teaspoonful of the cream cheese mixture.

To make the top crusts, roll out the pastry trimmings and stamp out three dozen (36) more 3-inch rounds with a fluted cutter. Brush the edges of the pies with milk, then set the rounds on top. Cut a small steam vent in the top of each pie.

Brush lightly with milk. Bake until golden, 15 to 20 minutes. Let cool for 10 minutes before unmolding. Dust with confectioners' sugar.

C
IRCA
1980 I
WAS STATIONED AT THE ROYAL NAVAL AIR STATION AT CUL-
drose, at the southern tip of Cornwall. I had completed my fundamental culinary training with flying colors. I was only sixteen, but brimming with confidence. I had sailed through cookery school with the highest grades and served aboard the naval base HMS
Pembroke,
running a watch of fifteen men, serving an average of two thousand lunches a day. I had a hand in changing and modifying all of the recipes we used and was given reasonably free rein in the kind of experimentation that has fueled my entire career.

Did I occasionally demonstrate the kind of youthful high spirits that are generally frowned upon by military disciplinarians? Sure, but my exploits never ran far past drinking a few extra beers, staying out late with the fellows, and chasing after exemplary members of the local feminine population. But when I was working, I worked hard and focused on the food. As I look back, though I still wasn't much more than a kid, I had a mix of competence that bordered on real skill combined with a self-assurance that sometimes crossed the border into cockiness.

The former landed me a coveted spot at the Royal School of Cookery and found me assigned to a special detail that aided in the construction of the cake for the royal wedding of Charles, Prince of Wales, and Lady Diana Spencer. It was an imposing pastry, a titanic English fruitcake of all things, housed in a cooled airplane hangar; an octagonal, eight-tiered, 350-pound cake with elaborate side panels that depicted the histories of the royal lineages of both the Windsors and the Spencers…in icing.

The latter tendency, characterized by my big mouth and a depressingly regular habit of telling my superiors what I really thought of their ideas, all too frequently had me consigned to said hangar painstakingly inspecting, culling, and cleaning billions of individual bits of dried fruits for inclusion in the matrimonial confection, often for days upon end. This was “KP” of the highest order for Queen and country. I'm happy to say, though, that I also participated in the design and execution of the beautifully crafted side panels, with time off for good behavior.