Battered Blossoms

24 Wednesday Jul 2013

Tags

Cooking, Food, Ingredients, Italy, Marcella Hazan, Patience Gray, Recipes, Rome, Stories, Summer

I just think these are lovely. Lovely looking, creamy, blossomy, with echoes of the courgette itself. A welter of these, piled high on a plate, having been plunged and fried in batter is the way. And eaten alone. That’s how I remember them when I lived in Rome as a student. This was the early nineties and even my pajamas had shoulder pads. Everyone had a cleavage and shoals of men followed me (and every other young woman in the area) home, loitered and then dispersed to find other prey. I remember these blossoms in their crisp casings were handy at parties – you could walk around with one, and a napkin would quickly blot up any lingering grease. Either that or it could double as lip gloss.

Everyone of my age in Italy lived at home and remained there in their childhood bedrooms doted on by housekeepers until they found someone to marry. No one left home to go to university, except I was at the university of Rome and needed a place to stay, so I lived in the garden flat of an Italian family in Parioli, a swish, hilly enclave.

The flat was actually a garage with a bed in it and a small toilet. I remember a window but not much light entered the place and I often woke up at midday or even later, muddled and confused and late for class. I taught English as a foreign language on the side, but this was tricky if still asleep. The dampness and general humidity both in the flat and in Rome in deep summer gave me what is known commonly as il colpo della strega (translated as ‘the witch’s blow’), a lower back paralysis eased almost immediately by plunging into a hot bath.

I remember stepping over Marcello Mastroianni who was sitting on my doorstep, having a break from filming, and thinking that I should probably stop and say something, but I was more concerned about getting to the bakery in time to get my bread rolls. Mantovani rolls were thinly crusty on the outside with a warm belly of bread beneath; they were sweet and soft, and I would often walk along eating them bare from their paper bag – they needed absolutely no accompaniment. The same applies to these battered blossoms. Eat them bare, preferably walking, and find a skyline or seascape to stare at, or even a wall, and feel their grassy tentacles dissolve on your tongue. Actually, some soft airy bread might work alongside: ungreased and ripped open with savage fingers.

Though these flowers look fragile and papery, they are in fact rich, and a few can make you feel quite woozy. The idea of the batter, known in Italian as la pastella, is to do justice to the delicacy and brightness of the flavour, and so the cleanest, plainest sort is required. I used only flour and water, and a pinch of salt.

If you want an upgrade, you could follow Patience Gray’s instruction in Honey from a Weed, and add an egg yolk, a tablespoon of grappa and just enough water to the flour to make ‘not too liquid a batter’. The egg white is also incorporated just before making the plunge. I have never got to this recipe, because I have found the original batter to be exactly as it should be. You could use elderflowers instead of the courgette blossoms.

Courgette blossoms fried in batter

Adapted from Marcella Hazan, The Classic Italian Cookbook

12-14 courgette blossoms

Vegetable oil, enough to come 18mm (¾ inch) up the sides of a frying pan/skillet

Flour-and-water batter ( see below)

Sea salt

Put 250ml (scant ½ pint) of water in a bowl and sift 80g (2¾ oz) of plain flour over it, beating all the while. By the end, the batter will have the consistency of double/heavy cream. Leave to rest while you get on with the courgette blossoms.

Wash the blossoms quickly and tenderly under cold running water and dry them gently on kitchen paper (this is not essential if you know where they’ve been). Snip off the stem and the little hook-like leaves at the base of the blossom. Slit the blossom open on one side (imagine you’re reading a book) without dividing it. Remove the little orange bulb within, otherwise known as the pistil.

Heat the oil over a high heat. When it is very hot (drip the minutest drop of batter into the hot oil and see it shrivel up instantly to gauge readiness) dip the blossoms quickly in and out of the batter and slip them into the frying pan. It is important to get the blossoms as open and as flat as possible, otherwise clumps of uncooked batter get secreted in the grooves. When they are golden brown on one side flip them over to cook on the other side. Transfer to kitchen paper to drain, sprinkle with sea salt and eat quickly, while still hot and crisp.

Crema Catalana plus fennel

12 Friday Jul 2013

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Fruit, Herbs, Ingredients, Nature, Patience Gray, Recipes, Spain, Stories

These are wild fennel flowers. They are even sweeter and more fragrant than the fronds, but their pollen flies everywhere, so if you’re thinking of picking some for their prettiness alone you might want to be aware of ‘pollen dandruff’. We picked off the little flower heads and munched away in the car. It was amazing how sweet they were.

Traditionally, the flowers are immersed in white wine vinegar, which is then used to enhance the flavour of capers. I didn’t think capers needed enhancing, but apparently they do. I did in fact thread a flower head through the neck of a bottle of fairly standard white wine vinegar. Apart from the excitement of doing this successfully which made me think of ships in bottles, the vinegar was gorgeous: thinly acid but full of glorious sweet fennel, and as the days passed it took on a deeper, throatier quality. I wanted to pass this on, because it really makes a difference to a salad dressing if you use it.

Fennel pollen

This recipe is from Catalonia where they call it Crema Cremada, which means ‘burnt cream’. Everywhere else, it is called Crema Catalana, which tells you everything you need to know about the Catalan personality. It is a simple custard infused with lemon zest and, in this version, fennel. If you don’t have access to wild fennel, use fennel seeds – all the recipes I have read do. Not everyone will like this custard, because it has such a polarizing taste. Normally I wouldn’t suggest a recipe that has this effect, because I think food should be democratic and unstuffy. But here I think that you should carry on regardless. Because it really is quite special, and once tried it is difficult not to fall in love.

I tried to describe the unique flavour of wild fennel in my post on the fronds. The most dominant element is licorice, and the flowers bring this to the fore. But while the commercial seeds have something of the night about them (the Michael Howard of the seed world) with a tarry, smoky, malt-like quality, the flowers (and the wild seeds too) are fresh, sweet almost to the point of sharpness and totally alive in the mouth. They taste wild, in fact. I think that is why milk is such a good vehicle here. Creaminess brings out the softness and sweetness and chilling dulls any lingering edge. You can go one step further and make ice cream, which is also lovely.

Crema Catalana with candied kumquats

In a month or so, the mellow yellow starbursts at the top of the fennel plant will be full of the seeds, housed in pods, to be taken home, dried and stripped. I suppose, given that I live in a city and that many of us now do, it is an experience in wonder to be reconnected to old practices and traditions like this. I am aware, though, that this recipe comes perilously close to what my old acting teacher used to call the ‘crumbling pigs’ arseholes’ school of cooking, by which she meant a certain kind of fey, precious approach to food, using inaccessible or pretentious ingredients. I was thinking of calling this post Crumbling Pigs’ Arseholes in her honour, but thought better of it.

Crema Catalana

Adapted from Patience Gray, Honey From A Weed

If you really hate the idea of fennel, infuse the milk with a cinnamon stick instead – this is also traditional.

1 litre of whole, full cream milk

2 tbs cornflour

1 lemon, the peel cut into 1 or 2 long strips

4 egg yolks

4 tbs sugar

1 tbs crushed fennel seeds, 5g fennel flowers or 1/2 tsp of fennel pollen

In a cup dissolve the cornflour in 4 tbs of cold milk (the cornflour will prevent the eggs from curdling). Heat the rest of the milk in a large pan with the lemon peel and the fennel until it just begins to boil. Remove from the heat and leave to infuse for at least 30 minutes. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks with the sugar to a thick, pale cream. Then beat in the cornflour mixture. Gently reheat the milk and beat in a ladleful. Now slowly strain the rest of the infused milk into the egg/cornflour mixture. Pour this back into the pan and heat slowly, stirring continuously with a wooden spoon until the custard thickens to coat the back of it. Let it cool, stirring occasionally to prevent a skin from forming. Then pour into 6 clay ramekins or one large clay pot and chill for at least 4 hours, preferably overnight. I served mine with some candied kumquats, a nice combination.

The Burnt Version

You sprinkle sugar over the chilled custard and heat it to a bubbling crisp. Traditionally, a salamander is used here – this is an iron disc that is heated until white-hot and then held over the sugar. The sugar caramelizes evenly without warming the custard. This is what I have always loved: the starkness of contrast in heat and cold. A grill/broiler will work too but you need to make sure the dishes you are using can withstand the heat, and there won’t be the same hot/cold differential. Or use a blowtorch.

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Deep Purple

04 Thursday Jul 2013

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

Aromatherapy, Fruit, Herbs, Ingredients, Nature, Recipes, Stories, Travel

We recently went to a lavender festival in an area called, confusingly, Cherry Valley. No cherries as such, but a billowing sea of lavender instead, made all the more surreal by its position in a vast, merciless desert, with windswept plains filled with tumbleweed and signs advertising pleasant and welcoming mortuaries. The air was different too. Gone was the hot, dry wind that smelt vaguely burnt in nearby Palm Springs. There was coolness and an endless waft of fresh lavender here, so different to dried, which makes me think of scones and English B&Bs and ‘granny’s pants’. By this I mean stored, clean pants from another era, washed with old soap and perhaps not dried fully, so, though clean, there is a suggestion of staleness.

A fresh sprig of lavender – or should I say ear because to me it has the same corn-like structure – is quite different. Camphorous, sultry and direct. It smells more like it looks: purple and lusty. It is known as a sedative, mainly, something you apply to yourself or a pillow to aid sleep, but according to the talk we attended, it is more of a balancing herb, bringing you back from the brink, settling you back into the centre of things. There were many other things growing, thriving in this oasis – thickets of tea tree, and a long avenue of broad-necked olive trees amongst them. But you couldn’t escape the lavender. We waded through it, running our fingers through the brittle stalks, letting them whip back against our thighs, crumbling the flowers between finger and thumb, enjoying their spiky scent and tight whorls of colour. We found a stall selling lamb kebabs and sat rather drunkenly in the sweet fug of lavender and smoky meat.
The night before we’d decided to visit a casino nearby. We walked in and I had to walk back out again. Noise, made up of music and machines merging like screaming sirens in vague counterpoint, cigarette smoke, cold, piped air, and the look of glassy appetite on the faces of the gamblers all combined to remind me why zombies are still such a resonant force in our culture. Nothing about it made sense to me. And there are no windows, and no clocks inside the place, so you lose any sense of where you are. Who you are, even. More tawdry still is the fact that the casino is built on an Indian reservation, a result of the deal made between Indian tribes and the federal government that allows the Native Americans ‘tribal sovereignty’. It feels, to me at least, like a bit of a crap deal.

So we needed the lavender the next day. I was wondering, looking around, if the same people at the casino the night before were here in this place. It was possible: there were lots of benign-looking elderly ladies at the casino, perched on stools, resting their sticks against the machines, handbags at the ready. And here they were too, with their cameras and grandchildren. I’m not sure how you could do that – how you could square that world with this one. Or how we can ignore the world beneath both, when the land belonged to the Native Americans, before cultivation and agriculture, and every tree, plant and herb was theirs.

Tea tree

Lavender is an odd one to cook with – bitter or rather ‘faded’ has been my experience so far. Lavender honey works beautifully, of course, and there are Provencal dishes that use it imaginatively and to good effect: traditionally, it’s cooked with rabbit. I understand the theory that it works best if treated like rosemary and thyme. But I’d still rather cook with the last two, and keep the lavender as an essential oil, where it feels fresh and alive – the closest to rolling a torn sprig in my hand and letting the smell climb into my limbic system. Ken from The Garum Factory suggested I go the lavender-infused olive oil route and add a few drops over a dish (in this instance melon and Serrano ham) and he was right. The lavender is gentle and warm, and definitely in the background, with just a hint of floral. No granny’s pants here.

From the aromatherapist at the festival, I learnt the simplest technique for using the essential oil: add a few drops to a base of water and use it as a room and body spray. It is beautifully simple and effective. I’ve been dousing my sheets with it and myself (it is, along with tea tree, a clear oil and doesn’t stain fabric. You can also apply it neat to the skin). Also great for getting rid of any ‘untoward’ smells in the house. Recipes below.

Lavender Spray

Fill a clean spray bottle with 4 ounces of pure distilled water (or tap water)

Pour 6 drops of lavender essential oil directly into the spray bottle

Tightly close the bottle and shake vigorously to combine

Be sure to shake it before each use, as the water and essential oils tend to separate

Lavender-infused olive oil, melon and Serrano ham

Adapted from Skye Gyngell, My Favourite Ingredients

English lavender (Lavandula angustifolia and Munstead) is commonly used for cooking

250ml (1 cup) of extra virgin olive oil

1 lemon

2 sprigs of fresh lavender

Pare the lemon zest in long strips using a vegetable peeler, and place it in a small pan along with the sprigs of lavender. Pour over the olive oil and warm gently to body temperature (around 99F) for ten minutes so the lemon and lavender can release their aromas. If you want a more pronounced lemon flavour, add the zest of 2-3 lemons. Remove from the heat and let stand for 30 minutes. Use on the day of making or within 24 hours. If using with the melon and ham, dribble over the cold fruit (which should be lightly salted) and serve with a scattering of lavender buds or flowers if you like.

“Mercury owns the herb; and it carries his effects very potently. Lavender is of special good use for all the griefs and pains of the head and brain that proceed of a cold cause, as the apoplexy, falling-sickness, the dropsy, or sluggish malady, cramps, convulsions, palsies, and often faintings. Two spoonfuls of the distilled water of the flowers taken, helps them that have lost their voice, as also the tremblings and passions of the heart, and faintings and swooning, not only being drank, but applied to the temples, or nostrils to be smelled unto; but it is not safe to use it where the body is replete with blood and humours, because of the hot and subtile spirits wherewith it is possessed.”

Nicholas Culpeper, Complete Herbal (1653)