How to Eat (37 page)

The following ideas for weekend lunch are just that—ideas. I have suggested two courses. If you want to have bits of prosciutto or a bowlful of olives or designer crisps on the table while you’re finishing off the cooking, do.

BASIC NO-EFFORT LUNCH

ROAST CHICKEN WITH GREEN SALAD

MIXED FRUITS AND CREAM OR ICE CREAM

GINGERED CHICKEN SALAD

A roast chicken is my basic Saturday lunch, Sunday lunch, any day, or even ceremonial dinner. This explains why I singled it out in Basics, Etc. (
page 7
). To prepare it, follow the method there. You can use ginger to spruce it up instead of lemon. Rub the skin of a chicken with fresh ginger (make sure you’ve got a juicy tuber) and then cut some slices off the root and stuff the inside of the cavity with them. Gingered chicken makes for a wonderful chicken salad later; bring out that can of water chestnuts from the bottom of your pantry if you dare, use lots of crunchy green leaves and some raw sugar snap peas (or failing that, snow peas), and sprinkle with some sesame seeds that have been briskly toasted in a fatless pan before generously dousing with an orientalish dressing. Use soy, use sesame oil, use rice vinegar—one in a fairly normal vinaigrette or all three in conjunction as you wish—and eat the salad in front of the TV.

Keep the green salad to go with either the ginger or the lemon chicken simple. Two small-to-medium chickens are fine for eight and won’t take long to cook. If you’re on a particularly tight timetable, get the butcher to butterfly the chickens for you (in which case 1 hour at 400°F should do it). And all chicken is good eaten at getting-toward-room-temperature, especially butterflied chicken.

MIXED FRUITS

ICE CREAM

For dessert I often provide just a plate of mixed fruits—in winter, out of a couple of packages picked up from the freezer compartment; otherwise, whatever’s in season. Frozen berries are fine providing they’re sufficiently thawed and you have removed every last strawberry. Sprinkle with some sugar, the finely chopped zest of ½–1 orange (I use my zester to get the rind off and then the mezzaluna to chop it finely, although I do sometimes leave the zest as is in thin little stringy ribbons), and a tablespoon or so of a liqueur of some sort. I throw all that stuff over while the berries are still frozen and then, just before eating them, I sieve over some confectioners’ sugar through my tea strainer so that they look beautiful. If I can’t stop myself, I add a few tiny leaves of mint from the garden. Serve with good vanilla ice cream or thick heavy cream. Normally for such desserts I prefer crème fraîche, but here I wouldn’t want any hint of sourness (the fruit, after all, has that) but might rather go for a bowl of cream whipped up with sugar and perhaps a drop of real vanilla extract. Work on the principle of one 10-ounce package of berries for 4 people.

THE SLIGHTLY MORE THAN BASIC LUNCH FOR 6–8

LEMON CHICKEN

PECORINO AND PEARS, OR STICKY CHOCOLATE PUDDING

PEAS

This lemon chicken is a version of the Greek
kotopoulo lemonato—
that’s to say chicken roasted in portions in the oven with wine and water to make an aromatic liquid to produce, along with eggs and lemon, a sharp but deeply flavored avgolemono sauce. Obviously, you can serve it with just a green salad, especially in hot weather, but otherwise I’d do a bowlful of buttery basmati rice (quite the easiest rice to cook and the fastest, see
page 272
) and some peas (which in my house means frozen young peas, with some sugar added to the water along with salt and some basil with butter, a nut of which I add to the drained hot peas—chop the basil at the very last moment or else use some basil-infused olive oil).

PECORINO AND PEARS

I cook the chicken in the oven just because I find it the most relaxing way to deal with it, but if you prefer to grill or sauté it, then do so.

If it’s summer or an approximation of it, then for dessert provide a lemony, crumbly wedge of pecorino and a bowlful of pears. Get the pears from a good greengrocer’s rather than the supermarket and buy them on the Wednesday before if possible (Thursday at the latest) to be sure they aren’t tooth-breakingly hard.

The chocolate pudding wouldn’t taste right in high heat, but in more customary warmth it’ll still work wonderfully.

LEMON CHICKEN

I prefer to go to my butcher for a proper, free-range bird, which he will then cut up into portions. I like the bird to be cut up small.

6 tablespoons olive oil, plus more, if needed

1 large chicken (about 5 pounds) cut into 8 or more pieces, or 2 small chickens (about 3 pounds each) cut into 6 pieces each

zest and juice of 1 large lemon or 2 small

1 tablespoon dried oregano

1¼ cups white wine, plus more, if needed

salt and freshly milled black pepper

Preheat oven to 425°F.

Put a large baking dish on the stove (one big enough to hold the chicken, which should fit more or less over two burners) and pour in the olive oil. If you can’t fit the chicken pieces in one pan and are therefore cooking them in two, you may need more oil. Turn the chicken in the hot oil for a few minutes until the pieces are golden. Add the lemon zest and oregano. Pour over the wine—you may need more—season with the salt and pepper; let it bubble up a bit, then add 1¼ cups water. Put in the oven and cook for about 30 minutes, more if the chicken pieces are large. (Check individual pieces; you may want to remove the breast portions first.) Arrange the chicken pieces on a plate that can go back in the oven while you make the sauce. Turn off the oven.

AVGOLEMONO

To make the sauce, first pour the chickeny juices into a measuring cup. You need about 1 cup. You can make avgolemono in a saucepan, but you may feel safer using a double boiler, the top over (but not touching) gently boiling water in the bottom.

In this pan put 3 eggs and lemon juice and start whisking. Keep whisking until the mixture’s frothy. Pour in gradually, still whisking, the chicken cooking juices. It shouldn’t curdle, but if you’re feeling nervous (or even if you’re not, for it’ll stop you needing to), put a bowl or pan of cold water next to you so that you can plunge the avgolemono pan in if it begins to look as if it’s thinking of overheating and curdling. It’s ready when it’s turned into a thin custardy substance.

Taste for salt and pepper and add more if needed. Pour some of the sauce over the chicken portions and put the rest in a small pitcher or leave it in its bowl and just put a ladle into it. You’ll have a nice big bowlful of it.

STICKY CHOCOLATE PUDDING

This is a variant on lemon surprise pudding, in which the mixture divides on cooking to produce a sponge above the thick lemony sauce that forms below. Indeed, it is known in my house as Lemon Surprise Pudding, the surprise being that it’s chocolate.

Although I didn’t actually eat this as a child, it is heady with reminders of childhood foods: the hazelnuts in the sponge bring back memories of Nutella, the thick, dark, fudgy sauce of chocolate spread. The proportions below are geared toward 6 but easily feed 8. It’s heavenly with fridge-cold heavy cream poured over it.

It is also child’s play to make. Choose good cocoa and good chocolate and stick carefully to the exact measurements. (You can, though, use 12⁄3 cups flour in place of the 1¼ cups flour and ½ cup ground nuts, if you prefer, increasing the amount of baking powder needed to 1½ teaspoons.) Use one of those standard white soufflé dishes 8 inches in diameter, or a shallow square 12-inch pan. If you’ve got only a single oven, it makes sense to use the shallow dish; it will take less time to cook.

FOR THE PUDDING

1¼ cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

pinch salt

¼ cup good unsweetened cocoa powder

½ cup ground hazelnuts

1 2/3 cups confectioners’ sugar

2½ ounces best semisweet chocolate, chopped roughly, or chocolate morsels

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

1 egg

¾ cup milk

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

FOR THE SAUCE

1 cup dark muscovado sugar or dark brown sugar

1¼ cups unsweetened cocoa powder

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Sift the flour, baking powder, salt, and cocoa into a bowl, stir in the hazelnuts and the sugar, then add the chocolate. Whisk together the melted butter, egg, milk, and vanilla and pour into the dry ingredients. Stir well, so it’s all thoroughly mixed, then spoon into the buttered dish.

Now for the sauce—not that you make it yourself (the cooking does that for you), but you have to get the ingredients together. Bring 2½ cups of water to a boil. Mix the brown sugar and cocoa and sprinkle over the top of the pudding mixture in the dish. Pour the boiled water up to the 2-cup mark of a measuring cup, then pour over the pudding. Put the water-drenched pudding directly into the oven and leave it there for about 50 minutes. Don’t open the door until a good 45 minutes have passed, and then press; if it feels fairly firm and springy to the touch, it’s ready. If you’re using the shallow dish, it’ll be ready in 35–40 minutes.

Remove from the oven and serve immediately, spooning from the dish and making sure everyone gets both sauce and sponge.

AUTUMN LUNCH FOR 6

RAGOÛT OF WILD MUSHROOMS WITH OVEN-COOKED POLENTA

CHEESES WITH BITTER SALAD

STEWED APPLES WITH CINNAMON CRÈME FRAÎCHE

You want mushrooms as fresh as you can get them. If you buy them in advance they’ll probably be lying, ever more limp and bruised and unappetizingly damp, in their brown paper bag in the fridge and you’ll get no pleasure at all out of the prospect of cooking them. So do your shopping on the morning before lunch.

This recipe for wild mushroom ragoût is adapted from a recipe in
From Anna’s Kitchen
by Anna Thomas. I was sent it one year among many other books under review and was surprised to find myself utterly seduced by it. Any description undersells it; it might be described, showily, as a gourmet vegetarian cookbook. But it has none of the worthiness or pretentiousness that might seem to suggest. It is fresh and alive and speaks directly and intimately to the reader. I could take so many recipes from it here, as I so often cook, if not exactly from it, then inspired by it (which is more telling).

STEWED APPLES

This ragoût is a sort of woodsy stew, odoriferously autumnal. As for the cheese afterward, I’d think about a really fulsome camembert or ammoniac gorgonzola, either paired with stringently dressed Belgian endive. Deal with the apples by peeling, coring, and segmenting about 4 Gravensteins or other cooking apples. Put them in a saucepan, cover with 5–6 tablespoons sugar (or to taste), a tablespoon of butter, the juice (and perhaps the zest) of 1 orange and 2 cloves, and/or a cinnamon stick. Cook, covered, on a low heat till the fruit is soft but not pulpy beyond recognition. Eat with crème fraîche sprinkled with cinnamon or bolstered with a whipped-in slug of Calvados. I love it with plain, sharp yogurt and maybe some soft brown sugar.

MUSHROOM RAGOÛT

1 tablespoon olive oil

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, plus additional, if needed

1 medium onion, minced

1 medium red onion, sliced thinly

2 celery stalks, sliced thinly

3 garlic cloves, chopped

salt and freshly milled black pepper

¾ cup dry red wine

1/3 cup Marsala

1 bay leaf

½ teaspoon fresh thyme leaves

1 bay leaf

½ teaspoon fresh thyme leaves

1¾ pounds fresh wild mushrooms, or a combination of wild and cultivated, wiped, stemmed if necessary, and sliced or cut into generous pieces

pinch cayenne

1 tablespoon Italian 00 or all-purpose flour

2 cups vegetable stock, heated

3 tablespoon chopped parsley

Heat 1 teaspoon of the oil and 1 tablespoon of the butter in a large nonstick frying pan or similar pan and sauté the onions and celery in it, stirring often, until they begin to soften. I sometimes find I have to add more butter. Add the garlic and some salt and pepper and continue cooking until the onions and garlic begin to brown. Add half the red wine and half the Marsala, the bay leaf, and thyme. Turn down the heat and simmer gently until the wine cooks away.

Meanwhile, in another large nonstick pan, heat the remaining 2 teaspoons oil with 2 tablespoons of the butter—again adding more butter if you like, though if you’re patient it shouldn’t be necessary. Sauté the mushrooms with a sprinkle of salt and the cayenne until their excess liquid cooks away and they begin to color. Add the remaining wine and Marsala, lower the heat, and allow the wine to simmer down. Then add the onions to the mushrooms.