Tag Archives: Breakfast

Looking up

19 Thursday Jun 2014

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We went downtown for lunch. I keep thinking of the song from Little Shop of Horrors – “Downtown, where relationships are no go! Down on skid row!” It had been about a year since our last proper visit, and though I’ve been drawn to downtown since I first started coming here, I’ve always been a little bit afraid of it. When I first got here I’d take the subway down to the Walt Disney Concert Hall – I’d get off at Civic Center and walk up the steps into this blazing steel sunlight, and make sure I never looked up. Reverse vertigo, that is apparently the term.

Anyway, that part of downtown is all sheer tower blocks, mirrored and panicky, like huge razor blades cutting into the sky. So I would look either down or straight ahead, breathing in until I got to a traffic light and then latching on to someone who was also crossing the road, as if we were friends. I once did this all the way to the Central Library, (looking straight ahead without breathing, latching on) to see Alain de Botton give a talk on why Los Angeles is so badly designed and hostile to walkers. On my way back, now late at night, I felt myself being followed. By the time I got out at Hollywood & Highland I practically rushed head long into the stream of traffic, and found myself face to face with Joe’s Jeep into which I clambered, frothing my relief.

So it’s progress that now, some years on, I can walk around downtown and look up without my feet slipping around inside my shoes. There’s another downtown that’s quite different to those corporate mirrored facades that birds crash into, believing it’s sky. We were heading towards it – to Spring Street because we wanted to visit The Last Bookstore, now housed in an old bank, and all around us were old banks, dark and gutted it seemed, no lights on, the occasional towel flung out to dry as evidence of a transient life. The banks are in the Beaux Arts style, tall and flat-faced with lots of windows and there were lots of people here too, unlike the rest of LA which is glossily empty of pedestrians (as if we ruin it or something).

The Last Bookstore is definitely worth a visit if you like cavernous rooms bulging with books, a bank vault full of horror (stories), a tunnel made of hardbacks, another tunnel made of knitting yarn and a floor made of pennies. And seriously danceable music and crunchy leather chairs. I went in search of a place to pee and found Creperie Sans Frontiere in a little precinct that connected Spring Street and Broadway, the only place that would let me use their bathroom for free. “It’s hard to say yes and it’s hard to say no,” was the lady’s parting shot, as she gave me the key attached to an egg whisk. I took this to mean that she has to decide who she gives the key to and who to deny, and that she probably has this quandary quite often. I went back to tell Joe about it (‘Spring Street and 5th, Spring Street and 5th’) and found him with his feet up on a cracked leather pouffe in the Lit Crit section.

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The crepes (‘galettes’ here) were huge triangles, rather like elephant’s ears. They were 100% buckwheat, which the owner said she edged towards gradually, until finally flinging herself entirely at the buckwheat’s mercy. The taste is rich and earthy, nutty, almost sour. It looks like burnt black earth. You imagine it will taste of an old hat, but actually it’s lovely with maple syrup and some goat’s cheese, maybe a few pecans or a fried egg. The owner had a tower of Nutella; I imagine it would be delicious with that too. We tried to decide where we were: Paris, New York or LA, or none of the above. Or all of the above, and ourselves in amongst it. Downtown is a trip.

When I made the crepes at home I made them smaller, almost like blinis, and found they were much easier to handle. Buckwheat is not wheat or even a grain, but the seed of a plant related to rhubarb (and sorrel), and it absorbs liquid much more than other flours. However, once cooked, it can take on flavours and textures well. Syrup and honey, nuts, soft cheeses, nut butters, jam, ice cream and sorbet. It’s also gluten-free and if you don’t tolerate cow’s milk (like me) then you can add a vast array of ‘milks’ to the batter. Here I used coconut milk.

Buckwheat crepes

Adapted from Arrowhead Mills & David Lebovitz 

18-20 crepes

1 1/2 cups (350 ml) whole milk (or see above)
2-3 tablespoons of maple syrup or honey
A pinch of sea salt
1 1/2 cups (175g) of organic buckwheat flour
2 large eggs lightly beaten

Put the buckwheat flour in a mixing bowl with the salt, then make a well in the middle to which you add the milk and the eggs and the honey or maple syrup. Whisk continuously to create a thick batter. Buckwheat is more absorbent than other flours, so you may need to add more milk – aim for the consistency of heavy cream. Cover and set aside for at least 30 minutes – this batter does better if chilled overnight and brought back to room temperature before frying.

Heat a dab of butter or a small glug of vegetable oil in a non-stick skillet or frying pan over a medium heat, and brush some of it off with a paper towel (unless you like your crepes swimming, which I profess I do). Pour about a 1/4 cup of batter (about a ladleful) into the middle of the hot pan. The buckwheat batter (in my experience of now having eaten the crepes every day for the last seven days) will not move around much but stay where it is; don’t attempt to swirl it as it’ll resist. After a minute or two, flip it over and cook for about 30 seconds. Aim for dark, blistered and crispy. Pile them up on a plate and douse with maple syrup or rest some fried eggs on them. Fried eggs go very well, oddly, with buckwheat crepes – perhaps it’s the egg’s sweetness.

Unbearably smug

06 Thursday Feb 2014

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The last of the Sevilles and I barely registered their presence. Here and gone and not really that baggy or grim-looking. Not ugly enough. Normally I’m halted by the sheer filth. But these were tight little things; tidy orange globes with a few grimy seams. All a bit middle class. Still, I couldn’t resist. Because when all else fails, you’ve got a kitchen smelling like an orange grove for twenty-four hours. And then potted up, you’ve got jars of warm pellucid brightness: Seville orange marmalade. And then you can spend the rest of the year being unbearably smug, perhaps handing jars out to people (‘it’s probably awful, yes, I made it, not sure what it tastes like, I didn’t bother measuring, oh god I never buy pectin, it’s all in the pips and pith!’). We are a violently humble people.

And we don’t do it like the French, who on the whole have far more sex than we do. My French friend Monique literally throws beetroot at me in the street. There is no preamble at all. And because it’s straight from her allotment, there is a fair amount of clag attached. She unearths atrocious-looking, gorgeous-tasting stuff and shares it with a bewildered, Gallic shrug, as if to say: what am I going to do with all this incessant greenery?

There are no strings attached to her generosity. And because English is not her first language, there is no hidden meaning in her conversation. There are no barbs or subtle slights. No crowing. We are great crowers. And because I have been here a fair while this time round, I have noticed this as one notices the way ivy creeps into brickwork and destabilizes it. You are demolished slowly, gently, by stealth.

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The clue is no questions. No interest in who you are or what you’re doing, as if your being interesting is somehow a threat. It must be something to do with being islanders, being victors and colonizers. We are guilty and proud and a bit defensive at the same time. All of this is in the marmalade, by the way: that bitter candy and burnt orange aroma, taut, thick rind against umber jelly, the sticky tributaries of syrup, the brightness in winter, the selfless preserving, the putting up, and putting up with, the sex (or lack thereof). We put it all in there. Possibly why Seville orange marmalade is such a complex preserve; because we are.

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Seville Orange Marmalade

Adapted from Delia Smith, Complete Cookery Course

There are versions of this elsewhere on the blog – I would say this is the definitive Delia, and my favourite so far. It’s lovely on its own on a piece of toast, an oatcake, anything, or dropped into some cake batter (gingerbread is a natural bedfellow as is anything chocolate). And in case you are put off by the intricacies of making your own marmalade, just so you know there are no intricacies: I have been making very good marmalade for years with nothing but a big saucepan and a clean handkerchief (for the pips and pith). It’s a bit long-winded, that’s all. Always worth it.

2lb (900g) Seville oranges
1 lemon
4 pints (2.25 litres) water
4lb (1.8kg) granulated sugar (you could make some of this light muscovado)

Six 1lb (450g) jars, a square of gauze/muslin or a clean handkerchief or a new pair of tan tights/stockings, string and a saucer.

Begin by squeezing the juice from the oranges and the lemon into the pan you’ll be using. Remove all the pith and pips as you go and place them on a square of muslin laid over a bowl; the pips and pith contain the pectin which will enable your marmalade to set. Now cut the peel into shreds and add it to the juice – as fine or as thick as you like, but the thicker it is, the longer it will take to soften. When you’re done, add the water to the juice and peel, tie up the muslin to form a small bag – make sure nothing will escape – and add that too. Leave in a cool place overnight.

The next day, tie the muslin bag to the handle so that it bobs like a cork in the liquid  (but doesn’t touch the bottom). Now is the time to put a saucer in the freezer so you can begin testing later. Bring the liquid gently to the boil and then lower the heat and simmer. It is ready when the peel is completely soft – you can test a piece by pressing it between your finger and thumb. This can take anything from 35 minutes to an hour and a half; be aware that once sugar meets rind, it will no longer soften.

When the peel is ready, lift out the muslin bag and leave it on a plate until it’s cool enough to handle. Pour the sugar into the pan and stir over a very low heat until it has dissolved. You may want to hold back on the full amount of sugar and go for a slightly tarter taste. When there are no crystals left, increase the heat and bring the marmalade to a rolling boil. Now squeeze every last bit of the jelly-like pectin that oozes from the muslin bag into the pan. Every little helps here, so be vigilant. Skim off any froth or scum that comes to the surface and leave the marmalade at a fast boil for 15 minutes. Now put a tablespoon of it on one of the cold saucers and let it cool in the fridge. If when you push the marmalade with your finger the mixture crinkles like a furrowed brow, then you have a ‘set’.

Keep testing at 10 minute intervals until it has reached setting consistency. The mixture will start to look more amber and treacly – there is a trick here which is to watch as droplets of the marmalade leave a spoon. When it’s ready, there will be one single droplet; one of the myriad ways of knowing it’s set. Leave the marmalade to settle for about 20 minutes otherwise all the peel will float to the top of the jar. Wash and dry your jars and warm them in a moderate oven – this will sterilize them. Ladle the marmalade into the jars and seal immediately. Label when completely cold.

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The branch line

31 Thursday Oct 2013

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Monday was a day apart. Perhaps that day in 1987 was a similar sort of day, when I wasn’t actually here to see trees felled, and the sea clamber up into houses like a white-fanged monster. Here the doors whistled all night. But it was the sea, endlessly rolling, throwing out the birds, spitting and frothing and covering the beach with spume and creeping ever nearer. At times it was a wall of water, rising up, drawing back. A boy was swept off the beach, just up the road at Newhaven. He’s still missing. There’s something sad and ghoulish about it, with sparse details (his age, 14, not much more), the sea with cruel intentions.

I tried to get a train. Up to London and down to Somerset. Off to see my dad after two years – down to the West Country, the Bristol channel, the other side. No one had slept because of the sea and the wind battering at our windows. 80 mph winds, the papers had predicted, and chaos on the roads and rail, and everyone had smiled because there’s always a joke about weathermen here. It’s either hysterical (the wrong kind of snow!) or underplaying things, like a blushing maiden shy of the clouds. Who can forget Michael Fish and his 1987 blunder about the hurricane that reduced Sevenoaks to one oak – “Don’t worry, it isn’t”, he said, in response to a lady phoning the BBC, worried there might be one on the way.

The taxi didn’t show up, so we hailed a cab in the street. The wind made me feel very light in the loafers. At one point a huge gust ripped open my coat, dragged my scarf on to the street and was unbuttoning my shirt in the manner of a really proactive first date. I had to hang on to a lamp post.

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The waiting room at the station was full. My mum worked the room as if at a party. She wasn’t coming with me but was there to ‘see me off’ which normally means posting ten pound notes through the window as the train moves off, followed by a jar of peanut butter. But there were no trains. Sheila worked in Brighton and had been up since 5am ‘because of the wind’. Francoise was going to Liverpool where she was expected by a group of friends. Another lady in a strange hat wasn’t travelling at all and seemed to be there purely to socialize. We joked about drinking so much tea to pass the time that we’d end up murdering people ‘because of the caffeine’. There were no trains, it was clear. There had been no train at 9.25, 9.58, 10.25, 10.58, 11.25 and 11.58. Sheila was going to give it til 12.25, and if that one didn’t turn up she was going back to bed.

We went to a cafe round the corner to wait. When I saw what was on the menu, something in me softened. Beetroot and potato rösti with Weald smoked haddock and a poached egg. You can’t rush a poached egg. I watched him gently spooning it through the water. Could I leave it another day? The predictions had been right for once. The storm, known as St. Jude, had been tracked way back when it was just a few wisps over the Atlantic. They knew it was coming. They warned us: unless it’s essential don’t travel on Monday. It had exacted the kind of damage that brings public transport to its knees, with branches strewn on tracks (we were on a ‘branch line’ fittingly), a bus rearing up like a distressed pony. Gas explosions, wild seas, a lost boy.

I ate the rösti on the platform, the lumbering behind of the 12.25 still visible as it made its way to Lewes. Too full, too few carriages, too early. I got there as the doors were closing. I didn’t bother to protest. No one looked particularly jubilant inside. And it was suddenly a beautiful day. I sat and ate the best breakfast ever from a cardboard box made for the purpose. Ruby patties, fresh and clean, with a hint of horseradish. I think they must have cooked the potato and possibly grated the beetroot raw. The poached egg was rangy as a jelly fish, the yolk meltingly tender. Clumps of haddock fell away. I ate it all with my fingers. It didn’t occur to me, for once, to photograph it. The photo of the sea above was of a quiet day, the moon a quiet night. It was good to give up. I’m here for a while.

Beetroot and potato rösti

Inspired by Sea Salt in Seaford, East Sussex.

Heavily adapted from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, The Guardian Weekend, 5th October.

Rösti are Swiss, from Bern, and began life as a substantial dish for farmers, but this one below is not a ‘trad’ recipe. I’m not convinced about the egg. You could experiment. If you’re not a fan of beetroot, you could grate apple instead. And I suspect this recipe could be happily adapted for parsnips. Parsnips and apple are good bedfellows.

300g firm potatoes

2 medium beetroot

1 egg, lightly beaten (optional)

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Olive oil and butter for frying

Put the potatoes (unpeeled) into a saucepan and add cold water just to cover. Salt lightly, bring to a boil, then cook for seven minutes and then drain. They should still offer some resistance to a knife. Once the potatoes are cool enough to handle, coarsely grate them into a large bowl. Peel the beetroot and grate it, raw, into the same bowl. Add the egg (or as much of it as you see fit) plenty of seasoning, and mix. Cook the rösti in batches. Heat a nonstick frying pan over a medium heat and add oil and a knob of butter to come up about 2mm up the sides. When the oil is hot, take a heaped dessertspoonful of the potato mixture and drop it into the pan and use a spatula to form it into a rough patty shape. Add several more spoonfuls without overcrowding the pan. Cook for eight to ten minutes, turning carefully once or twice, until golden brown and crisp all over. Serve nicely warm with horseradish, smoked haddock and a poached egg.

A good nut butter

05 Wednesday Sep 2012

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There is nothing like a good nut butter. Consistency is all; it must be smooth and almost – but not quite – runny. It must seize on the spoon, as if afraid to jump. At its best, it is reminiscent of set honey about to liquefy. Thickness is important. The test is whether you can speak afterwards. If you can, it’s not thick enough. At least five minutes should go by before you can unglue your tongue from the roof of your mouth.

I first tried simmering the nuts in milk, which softens them, but renders them too lactic for my taste. The result had a milky, cereal-like texture and the nut got buried (thanks, Thomas Keller). I was afraid that in their hard and whole state they would behave like ball-bearings in the blender, but the paste soon comes.

Supermarket shelves here (in LA) groan with nut butters of every description and every possible combination. The truly hideous gingerbread concoction Speculoos is currently doing the rounds, but of course peanut butter wins hands down. Most commercial ones are full of sugar, the nuts themselves having been stripped of any nutritional value by the time they are potted. They’ve done an amazing job at marketing something that takes seconds to make at home; I too have been wedded to shop-bought jars since childhood.

I remember eating peanut butter sandwiches (with butter, of course) while reading the adventures of Milly Molly Mandy. When I found a copy many years later, most of the pages were soldered together with thick, brown goo. I remember my muddy fingers on the edges of the print, the silence and muffled chomping. I revisited the stories of my heroine and her little-friend-Susan endlessly. Their decisions and errands, counting their pennies, visiting the haberdashers, growing mustard and cress. I always read and ate alone, and later slipped the plate under the bed to join the rest of the crockery and unwanted crusts. I forgo bread these days in favour of eating it straight from the spoon, and treat it as a dip. Actually, I treat it as I did then: as something clandestine but comforting.

I chose almonds for this recipe because the state of California is essentially Almond Central, and also because I think it can be the most disappointing of all the butters to buy. Virtuous ingredient list and folksy labels notwithstanding, almond butter tends to look murky, and taste granular and mealy; brown sludge surrounded by a moat of oil. This version is a real departure. The trick is, when blitzing, to go beyond gravel, beyond sand, to the shimmering, oily depths.

You can use whole, raw almonds, with the skin on, or blanched, slivered/flaked, spiced, what you will. Skin-on will be meatier, richer, and roasting them beforehand makes them sing. Marcona almonds are a Spanish import – fatter, softer and rounder than the Californian variety, and often toasted with olive oil, spices and herbs. Their naturally high oil content and sweetness puts them closer to macadamias. Worth a try if you can find them.

Almond butter (or any nut)

I haven’t given amounts here because it’s all feel, as far as I’m concerned. For what it’s worth, I always use blanched almonds, and if I’m feeling very virtuous I buy whole almonds which I put in boiling water and then slide off their skins. It is tedious and irritating and only occasionally meditative, but I find skin-on almonds harder to digest. I also prefer the blonde colour of the butter.

Whole almonds (blanched or skin-on)

Sea salt

Sterilised jar or glass to store but not essential

Method

Toast the almonds – spread out in one layer – in a frying pan or large saucepan over a gentle heat until they start to smell nutty and look slightly burnished. They burn very easily, so stick around and be prepared to take them off the heat immediately. Whizz them in a grinder for approx 30 seconds to one minute, or until the almonds are finely ground. Taste and watch; some like their nut butter on the dry side, others like it sloppier. The longer you grind the looser the mixture will become. You can add melted coconut oil if you like, for lubrication, but it isn’t necessary.

I make my own peanut butter as well as cashew butter and have occasionally been known to grind macadamias. It is criminally simple – the only caveat is they need to be roasted and salted beforehand (as in, buy a packet). Store in a sterilized jar or simply eat the stuff, still warm, with a cup of tea, as I do. What is not to love?

Bacon

15 Tuesday May 2012

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Life would not be complete without bacon. I even love Frazzles – pretend rashers eaten as potato chips – which is about as far as you can get from the real thing, and yet, there’s still something, a shadow, a tantalizing reminder. Bacon is dressed up now in all sorts of eclectic fare. You’ve got your candied bacon ice cream, your bacon muffins, your chocolate-covered bacon. But nothing beats a bacon butty. Even the name spells hope in the morning. One bite and you know that everything is right with the world. Muffled bread and sweet splinters of saltiness.

When I was on Coronation Street, each morning before shooting would begin with a trip to the breakfast bus. Bacon butty, strong milky coffee. Bliss. Years before, my long trudge to drama school every day was spent scanning the pavement for a glinting pound coin possibly overlooked, so I could get the tube in. My reward, when I finally made it, with aching feet and translucent blisters: a bacon butty. No ketchup (oh, go on then), ungreased bread, crisp fat, eaten immediately – bacon cools within seconds off the heat. No actual tomato (heaven forfend). Nothing green.

Incidentally, a butty is another word for sandwich – often used specifically to mean a bread roll or ‘bap’. Along with fried bread, a bacon butty is firmly in the Full English Breakfast pantheon, which is in itself a hangover from a less fussy culinary age – when everyone thought English cuisine was appalling and we were all terrible cooks and coated everything in lard and died at 45. Despite its damning history, bacon is properly egalitarian, and lends itself to endless permutations – it loves cabbage, carrots and peas, being crumbled over avocado, and brings depth and edge to stews and soups. Then there’s the sweetness factor. Here in California, it’s paired with maple syrup and pancakes as big as duvets, or French toast thick with apricot jam. But sandwiched between a soft cloud of dusty white bread, the fug of bacon smoke still hanging in the air; there is no bettering it.

God knows you don’t need to be told how to make a bacon butty, but here are a few tips about cooking bacon in order to achieve nirvana, and avoid greasy disappointment.

Bacon Butty 

Let your bacon come to room temperature. This allows the fat to release, and ‘loosen’ slightly. Lay the bacon in a large, unheated pan. Make sure the rashers don’t overlap. Place the pan over a medium heat. Cook the bacon in its own fat – do not add any. This ensures you have a few arteries to spare at the end. Let the bacon sizzle away until crisp. Flip only once (pretend it’s steak). Drape on paper towels so some of the grease can be absorbed. Embed in the fluffiest bread imaginable. Doctor with whatever else you feel it needs. Die happy.

For a bacon sandwich, my preference would be for the streaky kind – cut from the belly – rather than the leaner back bacon. Streaky has more fat which crisps up beautifully, and this is an occasion when more is definitely more. Nigel Slater loves his bacon; he suggests buying it loose wherever possible from a butcher or cheesemonger, or even a provincial post office. And go for bacon that is slightly dry to the touch, with a sweet, smoky smell. If it’s packaged, look for the colour, which should be a pinky-maroon, and avoid wet and flabby.

My nephews with their black pigs in Cornwall

And now to the thorny subject of pig farming. As many – including my brother – will know who have kept pigs, it is ‘meat for the cruel months’ – quintessential autumn and winter fare. The best pork is rich and fatty, supple and succulent, and this is because a happy pig will have spent his days rootling and tootling around, snuffling for acorns and eating kitchen scraps with his mates. They are surprisingly affectionate, curious and clever. Intensively farmed pigs are to be avoided at all costs; if you were ever wondering how to shame a pig, this method would be it. Most live in concrete hell, pumped full of protein to accelerate growth and so suffocated by the lack of space, that they become atypically aggressive. No wonder their bacon turns to pink, watery slime in the pan. Beware the labels “outdoor bred,” “traditional” and “country” too – vague, pointless and dishonest. Free range and organic are the only labels to trust and always go small-scale if you can.

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Bacon in LA

I have found it harder to find good bacon here, because trying to trace it to a specific farm and breed is a lot of work. And the state of California is huge – bigger than the whole of the UK – so ‘local’ can be defined as anywhere within a 150 mile radius. Taylors is homespun and family-run. I’ve heard only good things about them – friendly, helpful and they deal exclusively with local farms. It’s also in Sierra Madre, home to the world’s largest wisteria (which has already gate-crashed five backyards). Going further afield, the bacon from The Black Pig Meat Company is beautiful looking stuff: a rude pink, wonderfully stippled, juicy and clearly made with love and mindfulness. You can order online. If you are able to get to the Hollywood Farmers’ Market or the one in Santa Monica, seek out the Rocky Canyon Farms stall. It’s run by Greg Nauta, a small-scale rancher and farmer from Atascadero, California, who grows organic vegetables and raises free range cows and pigs on an open pasture. His applewood bacon is lovely, and it feels good to support him.

Foodster Jonathan Gold in the LA Weekly magazine also gives the lowdown on his favourite cuts of bacon and where to find them in LA. If anyone has any bacon-related thoughts to share, particularly if there is a gem of a butcher you would like to champion, please write in. I would love to hear your stories.

The End

Candied kumquats & rose jam

08 Tuesday May 2012

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A bit of a whimsical pairing, this. Someone was throwing out a load of roses – they were lying in a sorry heap on the ground, by the bins – so I scooped them up, fished out the earwigs and got to work. In the same week, I found kumquats tumbling all over the road, the tree bowed down by its own luscious bounty, so I shoved as many of them into my bag as I could manage, and walked away whistling (always a sign of guilt).

Anyway, I was brought up to believe a bit of light thieving is not only acceptable, but common sense when we’re talking about food that would rot otherwise. Seeing a laden citrus tree in LA – a common sight, sadly – its golden orbs lolling on the ground mere yards from someone’s front door, makes me feel quite sick. “It’s food!” I want to shout through the letterbox. “You can eat it and everything!” It takes every cell in my body not to jump the fence and fill my pockets, secreting the fruit about my person like a drug mule. To put this in context, I am the daughter of a woman who regularly scaled a neighbour’s wall to forage for dandelion leaves, which she did at nightfall, as if she were about to make off with their stereo. The leaves were for us, by the way, in lieu of salad.

The kumquat is the perfect oval shape, like a little orange egg. The neatness and polish, the deep apricot hue of the skin, lends itself to being shown off on posh after-dinner fruit plates where no one knows what to do with them. They’re so small that it seems a pointless exercise to peel them and you don’t have to, because the rind is in fact the sweetest bit. In an interesting about-turn, the flesh is sour, so the idea is to pop the whole thing in your mouth and crunch. You are expected to eat the seeds. The tree itself has been known to sit at the table – the potted version, I should say – where guests can pluck directly from the branch.

I think these work best candied. It shows off their texture, that nubby rind is almost all there is, and sugar in this setting brings out the sour. It reminds me of a bitter version of quince paste and works well with cheese, particularly Manchego and Cabra al Vino. A chalky, wincing cheddar is also lovely. For breakfast, it takes on a poached complexion, particularly with yogurt. I know I’ve already mentioned apricots; these have more bite but retain the same sweet-sour balance. Limequats, as the name suggests, are a hybrid, and much tarter, more marmalade-like. In fact, both work well as a quick version of the preserve. In ten minutes you have a credible, and beautifully syrupy, burst of sunshine for your morning toast.

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Candied kumquats

Adapted from David Lebovitz

This recipe is adapted from ‘sweet king’ David Lebovitz, who suggests poached prunes as an accompaniment. Interestingly, the rose petal jam is prune-like both in texture and appearance, though lacking the prune’s deliciously plump sloppiness.

1 cup (250ml) water

¼ cup (50g) sugar

15 – 20 kumquats or limequats

2 tbs crystallized ginger, chopped finely

1 cinnamon stick

Method

Slice the kumquats into thinnish rounds and de-seed. Any seeds you don’t get can be easily sieved out later, so don’t worry if some escape you. Bring the water, sugar, cinnamon, ginger (feel free to improvise if you don’t have these) and kumquats to a gradual boil in a small saucepan.

Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook for about 10 minutes, keeping an eye on it near the end. The liquid will now be reduced and syrupy. Remove from the heat, take out the cinnamon stick, and let the kumquats come to room temperature. They can keep in the fridge for a good six weeks, stored in an airtight container.

Interesting fact: The kumquat, though it behaves like a citrus, was discovered in 1915 to have enough cellular differences to be moved to a separate genus known as Fortunella, named after Robert Fortune, an English traveller who introduced the fruit into Europe in 1846. 

My rose booty

I have been longing to make this jam for some time now, ever since I came across it in Alys Fowler’s book, The Thrifty Forager. I’ve never been much of a rose fancier  – who can forget Annette Bening shrieking in her gardening gloves in American Beauty? – but I always hoped to be given some, or at least to be walking past a compost heap at the right moment.

I found my multi-coloured stash took on a deep port-wine appearance, and started to reduce after it was allowed to cook for 20-25 minutes. It managed this cleverly without pectin – I suspect the sugar does most of the work –  and the result is delicately toothsome. A faint ‘tearing’ sensation is important here – some resistance, rather than a general jammyness. For breakfast, serve with the candied kumquats over Greek yogurt. Some chopped pistachios would make an interesting contrast.

Rose petal jam

Adapted from The Thrifty Forager by Alys Fowler

250g (9oz) unsprayed rose petals

1.1 litres (2 pints) water

Juice of 2 lemons

450g (1lb) granulated sugar

Method

Shake the petals free of any bugs, place in a bowl, and add half the sugar. Leave for a few hours or overnight. This infuses the rose flavour into the sugar, and darkens the petals. In a heavy-based pan, add the water, lemon juice and remaining sugar, and heat gently until all the sugar has dissolved. Stir in the rose  petals and simmer for 20 minutes or until the rose petals look as if they are melting and have softened. Try one – there should still be a slight bite to it. Turn the heat up and bring to a boil for another 20 minutes or until setting point is reached. Remove any scum that may have risen to the top and allow to cool slightly, stirring gently so that the petals are evenly distributed. Cover and bottle as usual.

Food Forward

If you live in the LA area and have a groaning fruit tree that you can’t deal with or you know someone who does, Food Forward will come round, pick the excess fruit (and vegetables too, if you have them) and distribute them to those in need. You can also get involved in picking the fruit and canning it, and they run hands-on food preserving workshops, with some of the leading LA ‘foodsteaders’.

 

Soft-boiled egg and soldiers

20 Friday Apr 2012

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I remember where I was: sitting at a round, wooden table opposite my mum’s friend Pat, and flanked by her three kids in a kitchen somewhere in the Devon countryside. She’d borrowed this place I seem to remember on a break from London and I don’t know where she got the eggs, but they came in an unmarked box. They were brown and small and there was a pile of wonky toast, which we slathered in butter. There was also Marmite.

But the thing I remember most was that first scoop of egg on my spoon. Up until that moment, my mum’s insistence on runny eggs had incensed my brother and I; we wanted them as hard as ping-pong balls, rubbery if possible. Absolutely nothing must be moving within. But this was different – there was a faint sweetness on the tongue that salt only seemed to intensify. The texture was soft and yielding with the merest bite to it. To my mind the yolk was (still is) unthinkable without the white. They belong together and here it proved most true. Toast was almost redundant; the white tenderly curled itself around each spoonful of plump, yellow yolk. Everyone was quiet for a time – there was only the sound of muffled cutlery, the crunch of crust and crackly shell.

So began my life-long attachment to the boiled egg, though nothing has ever come close to that moment of transcendence. Maybe it’s because it’s so easy to be distracted nowadays. The act of standing over a pan of gently bubbling water for precise minutes requires a presence of mind, a slower heartbeat perhaps. An over-boiled egg is rarely uneatable – even with grey yolk and a sulphurous ring of shame – but a runny egg, the white still translucent, the yolk thin and watery, is not simply a disappointment but a waste. Perhaps we have become too removed from what Henry James called the “bloom of punctuality.” We no longer have any concept of the laying season, where we must wait for the hen – everything is available so nothing really matters.

Soft-boiled egg and soldiers 

Get room temperature eggs and a small pan of water (so the eggs don’t go careering all over the place). Bring the water up to a simmer and gently lower the eggs into the pan using a spoon. Let them cook for exactly 1 minute. Remove the saucepan from the heat, cover and leave for 6 minutes. If you want a slightly firmer set, go to 7 minutes. Serve with soldiers. I would say that a little heap of sea salt and a grind of black pepper is essential.

As eggs are invariably stored in the fridge, you can bring them to room temperature by sitting them in a bowl of hot tap water for 10 minutes. Interestingly, our habit of refrigerating eggs is not necessarily good for them – they don’t like extremes of temperature (who does?) and prefer a cool environment to a cold one. The bottom of the fridge is the safest place or an unsunny countertop.

Soldiers and their substitutes 

A strip of toast – the ‘soldier’ of the title – dunked into an egg is a great stand-in for a spoon, and it’s fun watching the yolk cascade down the sides. Butter is poetry in itself, but a soft-boiled egg can take all sorts of aggressive interlopers. Aside from Marmite soldiers, anchovies flattened on toast adds salty drama, as does a smear of pesto. If you want to forego bread altogether, asparagus tips are fresh and spring-like. Here you want a runnier yolk, so cook the eggs for 6 minutes only. Shards of crisp bacon dipped into egg are lovely; both are salty sweet, but bacon brings the toast-like ballast you may have been missing. Finally, a little spear of parmesan is nice to go rooting around with; the combination of crumbly, salty creaminess has a natural affinity with eggs in any form.

Buying eggs

I know it probably goes without saying that the words ‘natural’ and ‘fresh’ mean nothing in the context of egg buying. I can’t remember the last time I bought some ‘stale and unnatural’ eggs. And just because hens are ‘free to roam’ doesn’t mean they will; their natural tendency is to stay close to the nesting area. The most we can hope for, at least in California, is to seek out the Certified Humane and Certified (by the USDA) Organic labels, where there is third-party verification that no pesticides or herbicides have been used, hens are able to spend their days outside, grazing in small flocks, scratching around and generally being themselves. Incidentally, the best way of telling if an egg really is ‘fresh’ is to put one in a bowl of cold water; if it rests on the bottom in a horizontal position, the egg is very fresh. If it tilts or becomes vertical it’s less so.

Lime Marmalade

15 Thursday Mar 2012

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Preservers insist that it’s better, when making jams and marmalades, to go by weight rather than amount. Limes come in many different sizes, and with my crop some are no bigger than a pellet, so getting the scale out here makes sense. In scientific terms, sugar concentration of about 60-80% in a fruit product ensures its preservation; having to get out a calculator in order to cook something properly makes my palms sweat, so for now I’m simply following a recipe by National Trust treasure Sara Paston-Williams. Tasting what you’re preserving will also give you an idea of the percentage of sugar you will need, bearing in mind that a certain amount of bitterness is a good thing.

The steps I take are the same as for the bergamot and orange marmalade recipe, except I use 1½ lb of limes to 1.5 kg (3 lb 5oz) organic cane sugar. It doesn’t soak overnight as I don’t want the taste to intensify and I add 3½ pints (6 heaped cupfuls) of water to the juice, though you may feel it needs more diluting.

It’s clear from the start that when it comes to limes, I’m dealing with a very different beast. The skin is difficult to shred, being much tougher than lemon rind and the membrane refuses to part from the skin, so that in the end I’m chucking the flesh into the pot as well. The taste, before adding the sugar, is nothing short of harrowing. However, all potted up it looks very respectable, and the dark green shred gives it a touch of the tropics. It tastes and looks absolutely nothing like Rose’s soft and zesty jelly. This is dark, sultry stuff and I’d suggest moderating the lime with ½ lb of lemons to make it less punishing. Thinned to a sharp sauce, it would be perfect dripped over banana dumplings (bananas in any form work well), a steamed ginger pudding, or as a glaze for pork chops, shrimp or salmon. At the risk of sounding very 70s, men love this preserve; if I was into marketing, I’d call it Marmalade for Men.



How not to die from marmalade

23 Thursday Feb 2012

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To clarify, you can’t die of botulism from a dodgy jar of marmalade; leave that to the pickled cucumbers (although apparently they won’t kill you either, see the marvellous Sandor Katz). Pretty much the worst thing that can happen is mould. To avoid this, you want clean, hot jars, hot marmalade and sufficiently high levels of sugar and acid to inhibit the growth of bacteria. 212F is enough to kill off all the nasty buggers. An instant-read thermometer is a wise investment here; It doesn’t have to be hugely expensive and it’s a very handy piece of kit, good also for making fresh cheese, checking roasted meats and deep frying.

Although it’s tempting when you see the mountain of sugar sitting in the saucepan surrounded by a moat of juice, don’t skimp on the amount called for. The sweetness will mellow over time. I put my jars and lids (if the seal comes separately always use a new one, as it does degrade) in the dishwasher and then in a medium hot oven for ten minutes just before filling, and then again after sealing. If you’re unsure about whether to hand this out to friends, or if the lid ‘pops’ as the marmalade cools, just keep the jars in the fridge and eat within a year. Otherwise, store in a cool, dark place.

Lemon Curd

20 Monday Feb 2012

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Lemon curd is so simple to make, it’s almost off-putting. Hard to imagine that whisking eggs, butter, sugar and lemon juice in a pan on the stove for a bit could yield anything other than a hot mess. And yet if there was ever such a thing as sunshine in a jar, this is it: bright, tangy, soft as velvet, and delicious eaten briskly cold on hot toast. 

Fruit curd was originally made in stone pots that stood in pans of hot water and were then stored on the still-room floor – a room that was used as a distillery for herbs, medicines and alcohol in medieval times, and later for the storage of jams and jellies. And why curd? In this instance, the word appears to come from curdling (ironically the only thing you don’t want it to do). Some like their curd yolkier than this, but for my money Delia Smith’s ratio is unimprovable. I find whisking rather than stirring creates a lighter texture with a touch more wobble to it, but if solid is what you’re after, use a wooden spoon.

Lemon Curd

Adapted from Delia Smith’s recipe

Makes about 3 8oz/half pint jars (with some left over for immediate use)

Grated zest and juice of 4 large, organic, unwaxed lemons

4 large eggs

350g organic cane sugar

225g unsalted butter at room temperature, cut into cubes

Sterilise the jars by putting them through a cycle in the dishwasher and then transferring them to a warm oven for ten minutes. Whisk the eggs lightly before adding them to a non-stick pan. Finely grate the zest of the lemons (no bitter white pith), squeeze out the juice and add both to the pan along with the sugar. Very gently heat while continuing to whisk with a balloon whisk until it starts to thicken (8-10 minutes). Slightly increase the heat and continue to whisk for a couple more minutes, but do not let the curd boil or you’ll have scrambled eggs.

Remove from the heat, and add the cubed butter, stirring to mix. Make sure the butter has completely melted into the mixture before straining the curd into the sterilised jars. If you like a grainier texture, add some fresh zest. Seal immediately. Even if the curd feels thinner than you would like, it will continue to thicken as it cools. You can’t ‘can’ home-made curd; commercial curd has thickening agents and artificial preservative in order to make it shelf-stable. But what the heck. Lemon curd keeps for up to a month in the fridge and is lovely given as a gift. I know of no one who can refuse it.

Thoughts on lemons

Curd made with the sweeter, milder Meyer lemon blooms gently in the mouth. If you want more of a kick, go for Eureka, Lisbon or Ponderosa. Add intrigue with some lime juice and zest.

What else to eat it with

Spread on a grilled slice of cake or dollop/wallop it into thick berry-strewn yoghurt. American-style pancakes (small, densely stacked, evil) straight from the pan and served with curd and a curl of creme fraiche would make a decadent brunch. And finally, a pot of lemon cream: Mix three heaped tablespoons of lemon curd with the same of Greek yogurt and creme fraiche, some lemon zest and a spritz of lemon juice, and you have a heart-stopping (hopefully not literally) devil of a dessert, which also works well as an accompaniment to a warm pudding. Ta da.