Is There a Nutmeg in the House? (8 page)

Bring the milk to a bare simmering point, very slowly, stirring from time to time. The object is to reduce the milk somewhat, quite an important part of yogurt-making. Ideally, the milk should reduce to a little under three quarters of the original amount, but the yogurt still works if you don’t have the patience or time to
watch the milk that long. When you’ve let it boil up once, take the milk off the heat, stir it, put in the thermometer and leave it until it registers 54°C/130°F or the temperature marked for yogurt on thermometers. Have your jars ready, and some existing yogurt, preferably Loseley or Chambourcy if you’re starting from scratch.

Pour the milk into the insulated jars. Quickly – and very thoroughly – stir in a good big tablespoon of the yogurt for each 600 ml (1 pint) of milk used. Clap on the lids of the jars. That’s it. In about four to six hours the yogurt will be set. (You don’t have to put the jars in a warm place, airing cupboard or any such.)

I nearly always make my yogurt in the evening and leave the jars on the kitchen table until the morning, when I transfer them to the fridge. Yogurt doesn’t like to be disturbed when it’s newly made. I don’t know why but it does seem to be so. Anyway it’s a pity to break the lovely creamy crust which forms on the top when you use rich milk.

The basic points to remember about yogurt are that it doesn’t work if the milk is too hot or too cold. It shouldn’t be hotter than 54°C/130°F or cooler than 46°C/115°F. I think if you know about yeast you also soon understand about yogurt. And of course if you make it regularly, you use your own as the starter. Before long you find you’re making yogurt very superior to anything you can buy.

I believe there are many people who think you can’t make good yogurt with pasteurised milk. This really is not true. Although I will say that one year when, on a number of occasions, I managed to buy Loseley untreated Jersey milk its yogurt-making performance was spectacular. So was its flavour. Loseley don’t use it for their yogurt, though. In the first place, they say the public prefers skim-milk yogurt, and in the second, making it on a commercial scale with untreated milk isn’t feasible. Stray and unbeneficial bacteria could wreck a whole batch, and many shops wouldn’t stock it anyway. But anyone who has access to a supply of untreated milk should try making yogurt with it.

I should add that if I were going to buy new equipment for yogurt-making I’d invest in a catering-size teflon-lined saucepan. And one more point: when it doesn’t suit my timetable to wait around while the boiled milk cools to the appropriate temperature I do the boiling in advance. When it comes to making the yogurt it only takes two or three minutes to warm the milk to the right degree.

Notes

1. Yogurt made from reduced milk sets much firmer than when the milk used has been simply boiled up and left to cool.

2. Many recipes I have seen recently give temperatures too low for good yogurt-making, and also specify as little as a teaspoon of starter yogurt for 600 ml (1 pint) of milk. I find that’s not nearly enough.

3. When your yogurt begins to turn out rather thin and watery, it is time to start afresh with a new carton of commercial yogurt. I find this necessary only about once every three months. Advice to buy a fresh carton of commercial yogurt every time you make your own is sometimes given by home economists on the grounds that if you use your own yogurt contamination may occur. So long as you keep your yogurt covered and use meticulously clean spoons and flasks when making each batch, in any case, an essential of all dairy work, this advice may safely be ignored.

Masterclass
, 1982

Summer Greenery

Between the fake luxury of the lavishly upholstered avocado (the development by the Israelis of a stoneless avocado shaped like a little fat sausage is going to spoil all the fun) and the chilly squalor of the slice of emulsified pâté perched on a lettuce leaf, what is there for the hors d’oeuvre course during our English summer months? No prizes. There is – apart from delicious English specialities like dressed fresh crab, Scottish smoked salmon and potted smoked haddock – a whole world of beautiful and delicate luxuries, true luxuries, such as fresh purple sprouting broccoli, fine French beans, asparagus, cooked and served almost before they have become cold, with a perfectly simple olive oil and lemon juice dressing. Above all, there are, less expensive than any of these delicacies, English-grown courgettes, the only truly new vegetable successfully produced in this country since the great tomato transplant of the turn of the century.

It is from Greece and the countries of the Eastern Mediterranean that Western Europe has learned how to appreciate this delicious and versatile miniature vegetable marrow. It was, curiously
enough, in the island of Malta during the mid-thirties that I first became aware of the existence of the courgette. Locally grown, I fancy, on the island of Gozo, the courgettes were the smallest I have ever seen, no longer than a little finger. They were almost invariably cooked whole, unpeeled, and finished in a cheese-flavoured cream sauce. An excellent dish and one which for years I attempted to achieve at home, using courgettes far too big to be cooked whole. Nowadays I think that there are far better ways of eating the courgette. The Italians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the southern French, all have first-class recipes. I could, but shall probably not, write a whole book about courgettes. At the moment I shall confine myself to three recipes which all in their different ways make appealing and fresh first-course dishes. (I cannot bring myself to use the terms appetiser or starter. The first is meaningless in the context, the second makes me think of a man on a racecourse with a stop-watch in his hand.)

The courgette dishes are all, I think, best served as suggested in the recipes rather than as part of a mixed hors d’oeuvre. They do not combine happily with pâtés or with crudités such as fennel, radishes, and the sweet pepper salad given further on in this article.

More positive suggestions are: a sliced hard-boiled egg or two to make up part of a mixed courgette salad; and it is worth knowing that fresh prawns – on a separate dish – make a first-class combination with courgettes.

For the rest, the vital points are the split-second timing of the boiling of vegetables to be served as salads; the importance of seasoning, when and what; the reminders that seventy-five per cent of the delicacy of most such salads is lost once they have spent so much as one hour under refrigeration and that they do not in any case keep very long, and should therefore be cooked in small quantities and quickly eaten; finally, that elegant presentation is one of the first considerations. Inviting appearance does create appetite. If a dish, any dish, is enticing enough to arouse appetite, then I would think it reasonable that it should be called an appetiser, no matter at what stage of the meal it is offered.

COURGETTES IN SALAD

Choose the smallest courgettes you can find. Allow 500 g (1 lb) for 4 people. Other ingredients are salt, water, olive oil, lemon juice or mild wine vinegar, parsley.

To prepare the courgettes for cooking, cut a small slice off each end. Wash the courgettes and, with a potato parer, pare off any rough or blemished strips of skin, so that the outside of the vegetable looks striped, pale and dark green.

Cut each courgette into about 4-cm (1½-in) lengths. Put them into an enamel-lined or flameproof porcelain saucepan. Cover them with cold water. Add 1 dessertspoon of salt. Bring the water to the boil, cover the pan, simmer for approximately 20 minutes. Test the courgettes with a skewer. (A kebab skewer, its point protected with a cork, is a working implement I find indispensable.) They should be tender but not mushy. Immediately they are cooked drain them in a colander.

Have ready a well-seasoned dressing made with fine olive oil and wine vinegar. In this, mix the courgettes while they are still warm. Arrange them in a shallow white salad bowl and scatter a little very finely chopped parsley over them before serving.

Freshly cooked beetroot, French beans, whole small peeled tomatoes and possibly flowerets of cauliflowers dressed in the same manner as the courgettes can be arranged to alternate, in small neat clumps (not mixed higgledy-piggledy), with the courgettes.

In the days of the British Protectorate in Egypt, a vegetable salad prepared in this fashion was a familiar dish on the tables of English and Anglo-Egyptian families and in the British clubs of Cairo, Alexandria and Port Said. Well prepared and with a good dressing, the cold vegetables make a delicate and refreshing salad to be eaten either as a first course or after a roast of meat or chicken. Great care should be taken not to overcook the courgettes or they will be waterlogged and no more interesting than nursery cabbage.

N.B. It should go without saying that since the size and the thickness of courgettes vary a good deal, the cooking time may also need a little adjustment.

COURGETTES WITH LEMON SAUCE

Simmer very small whole courgettes (500 g/i lb) for 4 people), topped, tailed and washed but not peeled – or use larger courgettes, sliced as for the recipe above – in a heavy enamel-lined saucepan or small casserole with 4 tablespoons of olive oil, plus enough water just to cover the courgettes. Cooking time will be
about 30 minutes or until the courgettes can be pierced easily with a fork but still retain a certain crispness and bite. Sprinkle them with salt and powdered cinnamon. Drain off the liquid, reserving it. Transfer the courgettes to a dish.

Mix a teaspoonful of arrowroot, rice flour, cornflour or potato flour with a tablespoon of cold water. Add about 150 ml (¼ pint) of the cooking liquid left from the courgettes. Reheat gently until the sauce has thickened slightly and looks translucent and gelatinous. Add the juice of a lemon and seasonings. Pour over the courgettes. Serve cold, sprinkled with parsley. This is one of the rare courgette dishes which is not spoiled by a short spell in the refrigerator.

N.B. It is essential that the initial cooking of all dishes to be served cold in the Greek manner be done in olive oil, never in butter.

The following recipe does not sound very much like a cold first course vegetable dish. Anyone who can be patient enough to read through it will see that it is indeed a vegetable dish – plus eggs – to be eaten cold.

TIAN
OR GRATIN OF COURGETTES
,
TOMATOES AND EGGS

This is one version – entirely my own and a much simplified one – of a Provençal country dish called a
tian
. The
tian
takes its name from the round earthenware gratin dish used for its cooking; and the ingredients which go into it are variable and very much dependent upon individual taste as well as upon family and local tradition. Green vegetables and eggs are the constants. Tomatoes are almost inevitable, rice or potatoes are quite frequently included. And the
tian
is, like the Spanish omelette or tortilla and the Italian frittata, very often eaten cold as a picnic dish, or as a first – or only – course for the summer midday meal.

Please do not be daunted by the length of the recipe which follows. Once this dish has been mastered – and it is not at all difficult – you find that you have learned at least three dishes as well as a new way of preparing and cooking courgettes.

The ingredients of my
tian
are: 500 g (1 lb) of courgettes, 750 g (1½ lb) of tomatoes (in England use 500 g (1 lb) of fresh tomatoes and make up the quantity with Italian tinned whole peeled tomatoes and their juice), 1 small onion, 2 cloves of garlic, fresh basil
when in season, and in the winter dried French marjoram or tarragon, 4 large eggs, a handful (i.e. about 3 tablespoons) of grated Parmesan or Gruyère cheese, a handful of coarsely chopped parsley, salt, freshly milled pepper, nutmeg. For cooking the courgettes and tomatoes, a mixture of butter and olive oil.

The quantities given should be enough for 4 people but the proportions are deliberately somewhat vague because the
tian
is essentially a dish to be made from the ingredients you have available. If, for instance, you have 250 g (½ lb) only of courgettes, make up the bulk with 4 tablespoons of cooked rice, or the same bulk in diced cooked potatoes.

To prepare the courgettes, wash them and pare off any parts of the skins which are blemished, leaving them otherwise unpeeled. Slice them lengthways into four, then cut them into i-cm (1½-in) chunks. Put them at once into a heavy frying pan or enamelled cast-iron skillet or gratin dish, sprinkle them with salt, and set them
without fat of any kind
over a very low flame. Watch them carefully, and when the juices, brought out by the salt, start to seep out, turn the courgettes with a spatula, and drop into the pan 30 g (1 oz) or so of butter, then a tablespoon or two of olive oil. Cover the pan, and leave the courgettes over a low heat to soften.

While the courgettes are cooking prepare the tomatoes. Pour boiling water over them, skin them, chop them roughly. Peel and chop the onion. Heat a very little butter or olive oil in an earthenware
poêlon
or whatever utensil you habitually use for making a tomato fondue or sauce. First melt the chopped onion without letting it brown. Then put in the tomatoes, season them, add the peeled and crushed garlic. Cook, uncovered, over low heat until a good deal of the moisture is evaporated. Now add the tinned tomatoes. These, and their juices, give colour, body and the necessary sweetness to the sauce. Sprinkle in the herb of your choice, let the tomato mixture cook until it is beginning to reduce and thicken.

Now amalgamate the courgettes and the tomato mixture. Turn them into a buttered or oiled earthenware gratin dish. For the quantities given, use one of approximately 18 cm (7 in) diameter and 5 cm (2 in) depth.

Put the gratin dish, covered with a plate if it has no lid of its own, in a moderate oven (170°C/325°F/gas mark 3) for about half an hour, until the courgettes are quite tender.