How to Eat (51 page)

In effect, what you are making is a nubbly lemon curd, but even when you get rid of the skins, the fruit will hold up enough to create a proper pie filling rather than just goo. But although it’s solid enough, it isn’t stiff, and you’ll need a spoon rather than a cake slice to serve it out.

4 lemons, zest removed and reserved, pith removed and flesh sliced ¼-inch thick (reserve any juice from the cutting)

2 cups sugar, plus more, if needed, and for sprinkling

FOR THE PASTRY

2¼ cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

pinch salt

6 tablespoons (¾ stick) cold unsalted butter, cut in small dice

6 tablespoons cold vegetable shortening, cut in small dice

1 egg yolk

4 eggs

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

Seed the lemon slices and put them in the bowl with the zest, adding the reserved juice. Pour over the 2 cups sugar and turn well (but gently; as much as possible, you want the lemon slices to hold their shape) so that all the lemons are coated with sugar. (And don’t use anything metal; a wooden spoon or plastic spatula will do fine.) Cover and put the bowl in a cool place (or the fridge) for at least 12 hours or preferably 24.

Make the pastry following the instructions on
page 38
, adding a few tablespoons of ice water to the egg to bind the dough.

Divide the dough into 2 portions, one marginally bigger than the other, and then press each into a flattened ball, cover both discs with plastic film, and put in the fridge. The pastry will need to rest in the fridge for at least 20 minutes, but you can leave it in for days as long as you remember to take it out so that it isn’t icy cold when you start rolling.

When you’re ready to cook the pie, preheat the oven to 375°F. Roll out the slightly larger disc of pastry and use it to line a pie dish 9 inches in diameter and 2 inches deep. I have a stainless-steel dish of these dimensions that I am very fond of, not least because the pastry never seems to stick to the metal; I am not keen on ceramic pie pans.

Beat the eggs and stir them, with a wooden spoon or spatula, into the lemon mixture until well combined. Spread the softened butter on the base of the pastry (much as you would butter a slice of bread), then (tasting it first) pour in the lemons and their eggy-sugary juices. Sprinkle with more sugar if you feel they need it. Wet the rim of the bottom crust with water, roll out the other disc of pastry, and place on top. Crimp the edges to seal and cut some slits in the center to let steam escape.

Cut a strip of foil, enough to cover, loosely, the perimeter of the pie dish, so that the thinner, crimped edges don’t burn. I find the pie needs about 1 hour in full, but you should start checking after about 45 minutes; it’s done when the filling is firm to the touch and the crust golden. I keep the foil on for about 30 minutes. You can always do it the other way round, if you like—that’s to say, leave the pie uncovered for 30 minutes and then put the foil on to stop it burning.

Remove from the oven and put the dish on a rack. Sprinkle with sugar and serve from the pie pan, hot, warm, or cold.

Even I cannot live by roast chicken alone, so I move on. I love duck for weekend lunch, if only because it is made to pick at as you sit around the not-cleared table, lazily finishing up whatever remains. There are drawbacks: it is not easy to carve and it doesn’t go very far. Keep it, then, for when there are just four of you, along with a child or two, as well. The recipe I use makes the carving point less pertinent; you can almost treat it like crispy Peking duck. What you can carve, carve, and as for the rest, pull it into soft strips and gloriously crispy shreds.

With duck, how can you not have peas? Some will want also plain potatoes, to offer a foil to the rich and unctuous meat.

Don’t go berserk over dessert. Yes, a sharp and fragrant fruit tart would be lovely (and my Seville orange curd tart—see
page 246
—is an obvious contender here, evoking as it does another traditional culinary conjunction with the duck), but just as good, certainly easier, perhaps even more judicious dessert, would be a heaped mound of tropical fruit salad. Get papaya, get mango, some headily perfumed melon, and, just for the look (there’s certainly no taste), slice some star fruit into the bowl, too. The juice of the fruit (cut them over the bowl so you don’t lose any) should provide some liquid, which you can supplement with squirts of lime juice and the pulp of a couple of passion fruits. And although it might sound excessive—well, it is excessive—I serve with it a pitcher of warm, even hot, butterscotch sauce. You may not believe me before tasting it, but this is an ecstatically successful culinary combination.

RELATIVELY EASY LUNCH FOR 4

SOFT AND CRISP ROAST DUCK

PETITS POIS À LA FRANçAISE AND POTATOES

TROPICAL FRUIT SALAD WITH BUTTERSCOTCH SAUCE

The reason why this is relatively easy, if not just plain simple, is that quite a bit of it can be done in advance. The ducks can be poached in advance, and then all you need to do is roast them. The peas can certainly be done slightly in advance. The fruit must definitely be bought quite a bit in advance. Nearly all fruit is sold before it is anywhere near ripe these days, so unless you’re very confident, I wouldn’t consider buying fruit to eat on the weekend any later than Wednesday. And you probably don’t need me to say this, but don’t keep the fruit in the fridge.

The recipe for the duck is on page 89; for 4 adults, you will need 2 ducks (and that’ll provide enough for a few smallish children, too, who love this) and the recipe for the peas is on page 105. For just four, you need to think of using about 2 pounds of unshelled peas or about 2 cups of frozen young peas.

QUICK STOVETOP BUTTERSCOTCH SAUCE

To make a quick stovetop butterscotch-toffee-ish sauce for the tropical fruit, melt 3 tablespoons light muscovado or light brown sugar, 2 tablespoons superfine or granulated sugar, 4 tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter, and ½ cup golden syrup or light corn syrup together in a heavy-bottomed pan. When smooth and melted, let it bubble away, gently but insistently, for 5 minutes or so. Then, off the heat, beat in ½ cup light cream and ¼–½ teaspoon best-quality vanilla extract. (Or maybe add instead a slug of rum.) You can pour the sauce into a pitcher or bowl with a ladle and serve hot, or you can do it in advance and reheat.

MINT, ORANGE, AND RED CURRANT JELLY

Respectful though I am in general of tradition, I don’t like English-style roast lamb. Nostalgia makes me forgiving of red currant jelly or mint sauce, but neither is my first choice. You could consider an amalgam of mint and red currant, which works better than either sauce on its own. Decant your jar of bought good red currant jelly, grate over the zest of ½–1 orange, and add 1 heaping tablespoon (or more, if when you taste it you feel it could do with it) chopped mint. I use my mother’s rusted-up old Moulinex herb mill; I hold it over the bowl of jelly and just turn the handle till I think I’ve got enough. Hold one of the orange halves over the bowl and give it a squeeze. Stir everything together and, if you made a mess, decant the jelly into a clean bowl for serving.

Lamb is best, I think, when the sweetness of the meat itself is in relief, rather than rudely overtaken by a less subtle sugariness. This means serving it warm rather than hot and, if eating it cold, at room rather than at fridge temperature. The smoky sweetness of peppers is perfect here; they complement rather than compete with the lamb’s almost musky meatiness. Most people give you leg of lamb, but you should try shoulder—the flavor is deeper, more rounded, and the texture is fat-irrigated and plumply velvety. I am an awful carver and end up hacking an unboned shoulder into oblivion; a boned shoulder solves the problem.

LATE-SUMMER LUNCH FOR 6

ROAST SHOULDER OF LAMB WITH RATATOUILLE

GREEN SALAD WITH GREEN BEANS

TRANSLUCENT APPLE TART

I’ve called this a late-summer lunch because this is when it is eaten at its best—the air still warm, the wind beginning to bluster limply; it may be a late, weak August, it may be early September. But, hell, you could eat it anytime, even in the depths of winter. Mostly, I hate too much Mediterranean sprightliness when the weather is shoulder-stoopingly brutal, but the soft stewiness of ratatouille (or at least, that’s the way I like it) accommodates itself elegantly enough to an alien climate.

The recipe for ratatouille is on page 102.

ROAST SHOULDER OF LAMB

3 garlic cloves, peeled and minced

leaves from 1 sprig rosemary, minced

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 4-pound boned shoulder of lamb

coarse sea salt

Preheat the oven to 425°F.

Put the garlic and rosemary in a bowl with the olive oil and stir and mash together. Get a sharp knife and stab the lamb in several places. Using your fingers, push small amounts of the garlic mixture into the cavities and, if there is any left in the bowl, thin it out with a little more olive oil and coat the top of the lamb with it. Sprinkle with the salt and roast for 30 minutes per pound plus 20 minutes, or to an internal temperature of 130°F, for pink meat. Then let stand for a good 10 minutes before carving.

If you’re in a hurry, you can stud the lamb just with garlic, in which case cut the garlic lengthways into thin slivers and push them into the cavities. And you could, if you wanted, smear the top with a spoonful of good pesto. I’m not mad about the cheese element, but I have been reduced to this, and it works, which is why I pass it on.

If you want a gravy, just remove as much of the fat as you can, put the pan on the stove, and add a glass of red wine. Taste to see whether salt or water is needed. You don’t need to make much gravy, just enough to drizzle over the carved slices of meat, not so much as to provide a puddle on the plate.

GREEN SALAD WITH GREEN BEANS

You’ve already got the sweet soft mush of the ratatouille; what you want here is something crisp and fresh and plain. I’d stick to the paler lettuces—one soft Bibb or Boston lettuce and a romaine heart or two, the leaves just separated, not torn into chunks. Get about 4 ounces green beans, trim the ends, and halve them so you have a pile of short lengths and cook them in salted boiling water until they’re tender-crisp, about 5 minutes. You want them to have bite, but not too much; green beans are horrible undercooked. While they’re cooking, fill the sink with cold water and chuck in a few ice cubes. As soon as the beans are tender-crisp (start tasting after 5 minutes), drain them and then plunge them into the sink of icy water. Drain again and dry, either on a paper towel or in a salad spinner, toss with the lettuces, adding some tender little basil leaves, whole, or some chopped fresh parsley or the tiniest grating of lemon zest. Make the simplest dressing of olive oil, salt, and lemon juice or vinegar (using hardly any lemon or vinegar and even less if you’ve grated in some zest) and maybe a dot of mustard, if you like.

TRANSLUCENT APPLE TART

I came across this tart one Sunday lunch at the house of friends. When I arrived the pastry was being made; in the brief pause between first and second helpings of the main course the apple was grated relaxedly into the butter mixture, and then, at the end, we ate it. And it reminded me how nice it is to see food being prepared rather than just being presented with the finished product. The lack of anxiety in the cooking inevitably transferred itself, and that’s a salutary lesson. The recipe is adapted from Jane Grigson’s comforting and instructive
Fruit Book.
She, in fact, calls it Apple Cheese Cake or Apple Curd Tart, but she makes the comparison between this and the old-fashioned southern American specialty called transparent pie, in which the custardy filling made with melted butter in place of cream or milk becomes translucent as it cooks. The word
translucent
evokes the light and melting delicacy of this tart, and I can’t help finding the idea of cheese and curd a distraction. The only drawback for me is that it needs only one apple, thereby hardly relieving me of the reproachful mound of cooking apples in my garden in August and September.

I find it easier to get the pastry made, rested, and rolled out, and the tart shell lined, the evening before. Pâte sucrée, Jane Grigson stipulates, but I use my foolproof sweet pastry dough (
page 39
) instead. I have made this with bought puff pastry and it’s still good; I should think bought pie crust would do as well. But you must believe me when I tell you how easy my pastry is. You are not baking this blind, so once the pastry is in its pan, you can proceed to fill and bake it.

1 recipe plain pastry dough (
page 37
)

4 tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter

1/3 cup vanilla sugar or superfine sugar

1 egg

few drops pure vanilla extract, if not using vanilla sugar

1 cooking apple

Preheat the oven to 425°F.

Prepare the pastry and line a 9-inch tart pan with it. Melt the butter and sugar together over such a low heat that they become no more than tepid. Remove from the stove and beat in the egg and vanilla extract, if using. Quickly peel, core, and grate the apple coarsely, and stir thoroughly into the butter mixture.