How to Eat (62 page)

9 juniper berries, crushed slightly

1 large onion, peeled and chopped

6 bay leaves

1 cup olive oil

¼ teaspoon salt

3 plump pheasants, preferably hen, cut into 4 pieces each

4 tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter, plus more, if needed

3 tablespoons olive oil, plus more, if needed

1 pound portobello or cremini mushrooms, whole, halved, or quartered, depending on size

30 pearl onions, peeled

10 ounces pancetta, cut in lardons or diced

¼ cup Italian 00 or all-purpose flour

3 tablespoons sweet vermouth

5 cups game or chicken stock

9 juniper berries, crushed slightly

3 garlic cloves, chopped

freshly milled black pepper

few drops soy sauce

3–4 tablespoons chopped parsley

Mix the marinade ingredients together, submerge the pheasant pieces in the mixture, and leave for 24 hours. If you can’t do it before the morning of the same day, that should just about be OK, but don’t cut it any finer. I find it easiest to divide the pheasant and marinade between a couple of plastic bags, well tied.

When you’re ready to cook, remove the pheasant pieces and pat them dry with some paper towels. Put the butter and oil in a frying pan that will take the pheasant later and put it over medium-high heat. When hot, brown the pheasant pieces in it; you may need to do this in batches. Remove to a plate and add the mushrooms to the pan. Soften these and then remove them, too. Next you’re going to brown the onions, and you might need to add more butter and oil, as the mushrooms may greedily have eaten it all up. The onions should be well browned; devote about 15 minutes to this. Now remove the onions and add the pancetta and brown in the hot fat. To the crisped pancetta, add the flour and cook, stirring, on a low heat for about 5 minutes. Then throw in the vermouth and give a good prod and stir, to scrape up bits and combine. Gradually add the stock and then strain in the marinade. Return the pheasant, onions, and mushrooms to the casserole and add the juniper berries, the garlic, a good grinding of pepper, and generous shake of soy sauce. Cover and simmer gently for 1½ hours or in a preheated 325°F oven for 2 hours.

But keep an eye on it. You will probably have to take out the little tender legs after an hour and let the big, tougher breast pieces (yes, it is that way around) cook longer. When everything’s tender, remove all the pheasant pieces and strain the liquid into another pan, reserving the mushrooms, pancetta, and onions. If you’ve got time to let the liquid settle so you can skim off excess fat, so much the better. Reduce the sauce so that it concentrates and thickens; it should be loose and thin, but not watery. Boil it down until it tastes right to you and then put the sauce, pheasant pieces, reserved mushrooms, onions, and pancetta back in the original pan and reheat gently. And if you want, you can keep it in the fridge for up to 3 days until you want to reheat it. Serve sprinkled with the parsley.

If you’ve got any leftovers, bone and chop the meat and reheat with the gravy to make a wonderful sauce for yourself to go with tagliatelle or pappardelle.

SWEET-AND-SOUR CABBAGE

This has to be cooked at the last minute, but it doesn’t take long. You could cook it while someone else is clearing the table after the first course, or as people are helping themselves to the pheasant and mash. If I can bear to get up in the middle of the meal and do this, anyone can. You could use a processor to chop the cabbage, if you like the string-thin shreds it makes; the important thing is that it’s sliced, not chopped.

1½ tablespoons sugar

3 tablespoons white wine vinegar

1½ tablespoons salt

3 tablespoons light vegetable oil

1 large cabbage, green or white, sliced finely, tough stalk discarded

few drops soy sauce

Mix the sugar, vinegar, and salt. Heat the oil in the largest frying pan or similar that you have; if you’ve got a large wok, then that would do.

Toss the cabbage with a couple of wooden forks or spatulas in the hot oil for 2 minutes until it is all covered in oil and just beginning to wilt. Add the soy and then pour on the vinegar mixture. Toss again in the heat and let it cook for 1 minute or so more, and then serve at once, while it’s hot and crisp and juicy.

PAVLOVA WITH PASSION FRUIT

This pavlova version comes, appropriately enough, from an Australian book, Stephanie Alexander’s compendious, addictive
Cook’s Companion.
I was taken by her family tip of turning the cooked meringue over before smearing it with whipped cream, so that (in her words) the marshmallow middle melds with cream and the sides and the base stay crisp.

4 egg whites at room temperature

pinch salt

1¼ cups superfine sugar

2 teaspoons cornstarch

1 teaspoon white wine vinegar

few drops vanilla extract

1¼ cups heavy cream, whipped until firm

pulp of 10 passion fruits with pips

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line a baking sheet with baking parchment and draw a 8–9-inch circle on the paper. I often don’t, and just imagine what size the circle should be as I dollop the meringue on. This seems to work fine.

Beat the egg whites with the salt until satiny peaks form. Beat in the sugar, a third at a time, until the meringue is stiff and shiny. Sprinkle over the cornstarch, vinegar, and vanilla and fold in lightly. Mound on to the paper on the baking sheet within the circle; flatten the top and smooth the sides. Place in the oven. Immediately reduce the heat to 300°F and cook for 1 hour; the pavlova will color slightly. Turn off the oven and leave the pavlova in it to cool completely.

Invert the pavlova onto a big, flat-bottomed plate, pile on cream, and spoon over passion fruits scooped—pips and all—from their shells. Don’t be tempted to add other fruit.

A super Tuscan, such as Sassicaia or Oinellaia, made from the Cabernet Sauvignon grape, or a great California Cabernet Sauvignon, has wonderful, mineral flavors and will not be overpowered by the Gin and It.

SUMMER DINNER, WITH WINTER POSSIBILITIES, FOR 6

GRILLED PEPPER SALAD

MARINATED, BUTTERFLIED LEG OF LAMB, WITH GARLIC POTATOES

WATERCRESS AND RAW MUSHROOM SALAD

POACHED PEACHES WITH SAUTERNES CUSTARD OR ICE CREAM, OR SAUTERNES AND LEMON BALM JELLY

In summer, I cook the lamb on the outdoor grill—in winter, in a hot oven. You might want to modify the menu otherwise—only you can tell exactly what mood the weather puts you in and how you want, culinarily, to respond. In winter, of course, you won’t get the peaches, or if you do they’ll be expensive and, worse, probably unsalvageable by poaching. You could, then, just make a Baked Sauternes Custard (
page 217
) and eat it without the fruit to accompany it, or soak and then poach some dried peaches or apricots, or a mixture of each. If you find some peaches you think you could do something with, then follow the recipe for sugar-sprinkled roast peaches (
page 171
). I couldn’t stop myself from adding the recipe for Sauternes and lemon balm jelly, too. The advantage of this—apart from the spectacular but delicate beauty of its taste—is that it is pathetically easy to make. And when it’s really hot, it’s not just that you don’t feel like eating excessive amounts of food, but that you don’t want to spend excessive amounts of time in the kitchen.

GRILLED PEPPER SALAD

I never, ever, no matter what I’m cooking, use green peppers. If you want to add those expensive Dutch orange ones to this mix of red and yellow pepper, do, but that’s as permissive as I’m going to get.

If you like, you can do this the traditional way and arrange the peppers in a dish, make up a plainish oil and vinegar dressing, and arrange anchovy fillets in a lattice on top (dotting between the crosses with halved or pitted whole black olives as you wish), but I prefer to make up a salty, khaki-stained anchovy dressing, which may spoil the glazed Chinese lacquer effect of the oil-slicked peppers but does something extraordinary to blend and transport the flavors—sweet, salty, oily, sharp—so that you have a glorious, explosive fusion.

4 yellow peppers

4 red peppers

5–6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

2 garlic cloves, peeled and minced

3 anchovy fillets in olive oil, drained and minced

1 teaspoon lemon juice, plus more, if needed

2–3 tablespoons chopped parsley

Char and peel the peppers as directed on
page 86
. Whatever you do, don’t peel them under running water; you will lose all those sweet peppery juices. Peel them, rather, over a bowl to catch all those sweet drips. Don’t be neurotic about getting every last bit of skin off; most will come off easily enough, and the rest you can live with.

Cut the peppers into strips and pile into a shallow bowl. In a heavy-bottomed pan, combine the olive oil and garlic and heat, stirring once you see it’s got warm. After about 30 seconds, stir in the anchovies and keep stirring on low heat until they’ve melted into the oil. Then pour in the juices you caught from the peppers as you peeled them. Take off the heat. Add the lemon juice, taste, and add more if you like. Pour over the peppers, turn well to coat, then cover tightly with plastic film and leave to macerate for at least 3 hours, though 24 in the fridge would be even better. Sometimes I leave this for about half a week in the fridge and it is all the more silkily fabulous for it—as long as you remember to let it come to room temperature before you even think of eating it.

Transfer to a large plate, preferably a white one, to serve, and cover with the parsley.

There are quite a lot of peppers for 6 people, but that’s for two reasons: the first is that I find people want them to stay on the table, within greedy arm’s reach, with the lamb; the second is that if you’re going to do some peeling, you may as well try for some leftovers later.

BUTTERFLIED LEG OF LAMB WITH GARLIC POTATOES

This is one of my most regular regulars. It is the flattened, boned leg that, opened up, makes a vaguely butterfly shape. In summer I cook it on the grill in the garden. This year I started doing it in winter, as well, in a 425°F oven for about 45 minutes, and it was wonderful. Regular lamb may not be as tender as baby or spring lamb, but the taste can be deeper and better, really, and the marinade sees off any potential toughness, despite the unforgiving heat of the oven. I don’t serve a sauce with this, except for the deglazed meat juices in the pan. In summer there aren’t even any meat juices, as they’ve disappeared into the flames, but no one seems to mind.

You must go to a butcher to get the lamb butterflied, unless you feel able to do it yourself. I’ve never tried but I keep meaning to learn. Because it takes so little time to cook, this is a very good way of accommodating a lamb roast into an after-work dinner-party schedule. And think of it more as a steak in that the cooking time is more to do with its thickness than its weight.

1 5-pound butterflied leg of lamb

1¼ cups extra-virgin olive oil

zest of 1 lemon

4 garlic cloves, crushed with the flat of knife

2 rosemary sprigs, minced

6 peppercorns

4½ pounds potatoes, cut into ½-inch dice

Put the lamb with all the rest of the ingredients in a big plastic bag, refrigerated, for up to 30 hours, if you can, turning once or twice. Take it out of the fridge when you get back from work (or midafternoon, if it’s the weekend and if the weather’s not too hot) to let the oil in the marinade loosen and warm.

Preheat the oven to 425°F. Take the lamb out of the bag and put in a roasting pan. Pour the marinade into 2 baking dishes; these are for the potatoes, which need to roast about 1 hour, or until golden. Turn the potatoes in the marinade in their pans, using your hands to make sure the potatoes are well slicked in the heady oil, and put them in the oven. Roast the lamb for about 45 minutes or to an internal temperature of 130°F for medium or pinkish. Because you need the lamb to rest 10–15 minutes before carving, put the potatoes in at the same time as the lamb—a squeeze in one oven, but not impossible. And you can always cook the lamb first and eat it lukewarm. Transfer the lamb to a carving board, reserving the oily juices it leaves behind; serve this as a sauce.

WATERCRESS, RAW MUSHROOM SALAD

For the salad, buy 2–3 bunches of watercress and slice about 6 ounces of ordinary button mushrooms thinly. For the dressing, I just mix some extra-virgin olive oil with lemon juice—basic and good.

POACHED PEACHES WITH SAUTERNES CUSTARD

The difficult thing about real custard is the tedium of the stirring and its necessity; the possibility of curdling is never far away. Difficult is perhaps not the right word, but certainly the prospect of making pouring (as opposed to baked) custard can feel too daunting, and I realized I went out of my way to avoid it. Then I hit upon an idea—why not make a runny custard in the oven? I thought I could do it in advance and strain it to make sure no skin got in and then reheat it in a bain-marie on the stove when I wanted it. I doubted it would work because it seemed to me that if it was such a good idea someone would have come up with it before. But it did work; evidently I am either lazier or more fearful than other food writers, or both.