How to Eat (41 page)

Start beating the egg and sugar mixture again. Pour the wine over it and continue beating while you then pour in the cream. Don’t go mad with the whisking. If you beat too much air in, it’ll go frothy and you will have a layer of bubbles on top, which you don’t want. Strain the mixture and pour into a 4-cup dish (this will help remove some froth). Put the dish into a roasting pan and pour the water into the pan to come about halfway up the sides of the dish. Cover loosely with parchment or waxed paper.

Bake for about 1 hour. The custard should be firm but not immobile; when you press it with your fingers it should feel set but with a little wobble still within. When you eat it it should be just warm, soft, and voluptuous, like an eighteenth-century courtesan’s inner thigh; you don’t want something bouncy and jellied. A bit of dribble doesn’t matter: it might not look defined on the plate, but it will taste resolutely good on the palate.

On my last birthday, I went to the local pub for lunch. I should amplify; the pub in question is the Anglesea Arms, whose kitchen is presided over by Dan Evans, a one-time protégé of British super-chef Alastair Little. Evans’s food is fresh, strong, modern, but not caricaturedly so, and eclectic but not vertiginously so. I suppose because it’s a pub rather than a restaurant—although there is a properly designated restaurant space—the food is bound to be more informal, nearer to the food you would like to eat at home.

I had six oysters, then potato pancakes with quickly marinated smoked haddock, which lay on top of each pancake with a dollop of crème fraîche beneath and a flurry of snipped chives on top. This was heavenly. And, I have since found out, not hard to make. You can replace the haddock with smoked salmon, but somehow that seems to signify “no effort.” Although the smoked haddock is easily prepared once you get home, you do need to go to a fish seller to get the fish cut into the requisite thin slices. If this is too much trouble, you can wander off toward other things; these pancakes are good topped with chicken livers sautéed in butter and the pan deglazed with Marsala, sherry, or muscat wine. Or you might consider a tranche of just-seared salmon (or a silky layer of the smoked stuff) with a poached egg on top.

These pancakes—crêpes Parmentier—are named in honor of the man who forced the potato into the affections of the French and who persuaded, to that end, Marie Antoinette to weave potato flowers into her hair. They aren’t difficult, but you need a blini pan about 4½ inches in diameter.

THE SMALL BUT PERFECTLY FORMED LUNCH FOR 4

CRÊPES PARMENTIER WITH MARINATED SMOKED HADDOCK

POIRES BELLE HÉLÈNE

CRÊPES PARMENTIER WITH MARINATED SMOKED HADDOCK

When you buy the haddock (you may have to order it in advance), ask the fish seller to cut it into very thin slices, rather like smoked salmon. It won’t be quite so thin, but you want him to be thinking in that direction.

I get nine pancakes out of the quantities stated, so you’ve got room to lose one and still give people 2 each. If you think 2 each isn’t going to be enough, then just boost quantities.

FOR THE POTATO PANCAKES

1 pound floury potatoes, peeled and cut into ½-inch dice

4 teaspoons all-purpose flour

3 eggs

4 egg whites

¼ cup crème fraîche or heavy cream

¼ cup milk

salt and freshly milled black pepper

vegetable oil, for frying

FOR THE HADDOCK

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

juice of 3 lemons

sea salt and freshly milled black pepper

1 pound smoked haddock (finnan haddie), sliced very thinly (see headnote)

1 cup crème fraîche

small bunch chives, snipped

3–4 tablespoons chopped coriander

Put the potatoes in a steamer basket or perforated container (a metal colander would do) over gently boiling salted water and steam until tender. Try them after 20–30 minutes, and then keep trying. At about the time they’re ready, preheat the oven to 350°F and put in it a plate big enough to hold about 9 of the pancakes.

Now, put the potatoes into a bowl and add the flour, mixing well. I tend to use a hand-held electric mixer for the entire operation. Then add the eggs, egg whites, crème fraîche, and milk; mix well so that you’ve got a smooth, thick batter, and add salt and pepper.

Pour a film of oil into a blini pan and put it on to the heat. When it’s very hot add some batter, about a half ladleful or so. The pan should be slightly more than half filled. Keep it on the heat and watch; when the pancake is ready to turn, you’ll notice the top beginning to bubble and the bottom will be brown. You can judge this by slipping a spatula underneath the pancake and upturning it slightly. Having flipped it over, cook it for slightly less time than the first side. These pancakes are easy to turn anyway, so don’t worry about it. And if you make a mess of the first one, just jettison it and proceed. As each pancake is cooked, put it on the plate in the oven to keep warm.

While you’re cooking the pancakes, prepare the haddock. In a shallow dish big enough to take all the fish, pour in the oil and lemon juice and sprinkle on some of the salt (I know you think the fish is salty enough anyway, but it will need salt, I promise), grind over some pepper, and place the thinly sliced fish in this basic marinade for 4–5 minutes only. This means you can really wait to do this until you’ve more or less finished dealing with the pancakes. By this time you’ll be taking the pancakes in your stride so won’t worry about having to fiddle with something else at the same time.

I like serving the component parts separately, for people to assemble themselves. On one plate place the lemony fish, on another the pancakes, in a bowl the crème fraîche, and in a couple of others the snipped chives and chopped coriander. Diners should put a pancake on their plates, lay on it a piece of fish, dollop over the crème fraîche, and douse all generously with the chives and/or coriander.

ST. JOHN’S SALAD

As for salads or something to eat with or after, I would offer a salad from London’s St. John’s restaurant of fresh, fresh flat-leaf parsley with red onion rings and soaked, drained, and dried salt-preserved capers (or use those put up in brine). A drizzle of oil with the quickest squeeze of lemon is all you need; it is important after the intense flavors of the haddock that the salad dressing should be light.

POIRES BELLE HéLèNE

Now for the pears. Old-fashioned they certainly are, and my grandmother used to make them for me when I was a child. But they’re not nursery food and it isn’t just nostalgia that makes me dredge them up. Pears are so rarely edible when raw. When they’re good, they’re wonderful, but I am beginning to think Ralph Waldo Emerson was being optimistic when he wrote, “There are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect to eat.” Most pears go from hard to woolly without ever passing through the luscious ripe stage. Poaching pears is one way of dealing with all those hard, unyielding fruits in the shops; somehow, however wooden they felt raw, poached they become infused with a juice-bursting plumpness. In fact, it is a positive advantage to use what would in other circumstances seem annoyingly firm fruit. (Actually, I have rather a soft spot for canned pears; the dense graininess of the liquid-soused fruit is remarkably seductive.)

Traditionally, this dessert consists of ice cream topped with a poached pear, chocolate sauce, and, finally, candied violets. I’d rather put on the table a tub of ice cream, a plate of poached pears, a pitcher of chocolate sauce, and, if possible, a saucerful of the violets.

FOR THE PEARS

4–6 firm Bartlett pears or other dessert variety

juice of 1 lemon

½ cup superfine sugar or vanilla sugar (
page 72
)

1 vanilla bean, or 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract if not using vanilla sugar

FOR THE CHOCOLATE SAUCE

8 ounces bittersweet chocolate

½ cup strong black coffee, or 1 teaspoon instant coffee in ½ cup boiling water

½ cup superfine sugar

½ cup heavy cream

1 quart best-quality vanilla ice cream

crystallized violets (optional)

Peel, halve, and core the pears and sprinkle over them the lemon juice to stop them from discoloring. In a wide shallow pan (in which the pears will fit in one layer—otherwise cook them in batches) put 1¼ cups water, the sugar, and the vanilla bean, if using. Bring to the boil, stirring every now and again to make sure the sugar dissolves, then lower the heat slightly and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the vanilla extract, if using. Put the pears into the liquid, cut side down, and raise the heat again so that the syrup boils up and the pears are covered by it. You may need to spoon the syrup over. After half a minute or so, lower the heat, then cover the pan and simmer for 10 minutes; turn the pears, cover the pan again, and simmer for another 10 minutes. Continue poaching until the pears are cooked and translucent; they should feel tender (but not soggy) when pierced. They may need more or less cooking time—it depends on the pears. Take off the heat, keep covered, and leave to cool.

Now the chocolate sauce: place the chocolate, broken up into small pieces, in a thick-bottomed pan with the coffee and sugar and melt over a low heat, stirring occasionally. Then pour in the cream, still stirring, and when it is very hot pour into a warmed sauceboat or a bowl with a ladle.

To serve, arrange pears cut-side down on a big flat plate and pour some syrup over. (Any remaining syrup will keep in the fridge or freezer and can be used to pour over apples or other fruit when making pies or crumbles. You can wash the vanilla pod, wipe it and put it in a canister of sugar.) Offer with the ice cream, sauce, and violets, if using, served separately; allow diners to help themselves.

People are wrong to be daunted by pastry, but there’s no point in pretending they aren’t. There is something unhelpful about suggesting you come to grips with it at the end of a long day’s work, but on the weekend you can work calmly. And the weekend is just the time to eat simple, comforting food such as traditional English steak and kidney pie or rhubarb meringue pies or a soft and swollen, creamy crab tart.

The following four menus all include a pastry factor.

A SCHOOL-DINNER LUNCH FOR 4–6

STEAK AND KIDNEY PIE

BANANA CUSTARD

If you can’t stomach the idea of banana custard, substitute the trifle on
page 109
or provide good ripe bananas and good thick cream and put them on the table with a bowl of soft brown sugar and let everyone mash their own.

STEAK AND KIDNEY PIE

Cook the meat in its licorice-dark gravy first and then assemble the pie later with the made, cooled filing. The advantage of the two-pronged attack is that the meat is at its best when cooked, on low heat, for a good long time and the pastry needs a shorter time at a higher heat to keep it crisp but yieldingly rich. Another advantage is that you can cook the meat in advance. I make a suet dough here rather than a regular one for two reasons. The first is the most compelling—it goes so well, it fits, tastes as it should; it somehow manages to give me a nostalgic glow of satisfaction about food I was never actually given to eat as a child. The second is simply that this is the easiest of all pastries to make and roll out; just stir all the ingredients together in the bowl, roll out, and stretch any old how over the pie. Suet crust (unlike ordinary pastry, which benefits from hanging around) has to be baked the minute it’s made, and it makes for a bumpy, ramshackle-looking pie.

If you don’t like kidneys (and unless you’ve got a good butcher they can be bitter and somehow sawdusty and rubbery at the same time), then just boost the quantities of steak and add more mushrooms. These should be cremini mushrooms, if possible; regular button mushrooms can sometimes be just pretty polystyrene. I use stout rather than wine because I love it, and also because I make the pie filling in advance and don’t drink enough to have an open bottle of red wine on the go. Use the best beef stock you can, but if you can’t do better than a good cube, then don’t lose sleep over it.

If you cannot get suet (beef fat from around the kidneys; see
page 459
), then use any plain pastry dough (see
page 37
) made with lard or half lard and vegetable shortening and butter.

This is, of course, a standard British dish, but I start it off as the Italians do their stews, with a soffritto of carrot, onion, celery, and, less orthodox, sage. If the lovage is out in the garden, then I use that instead of celery, but to be frank, it isn’t for long that the desire to eat steak and kidney pie and the seasonal availability of lovage overlap. You could, I suppose, add garlic too, as the Italians would, but I don’t. Not because I think it would be disastrous, but because I just instinctively don’t.

4 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 medium onions, minced

1 medium carrot, minced