Delight in the dish

29 Wednesday Apr 2015

Tags

Cake, Cookbook, Elizabeth David, Food, Ingredients, Recipes, Stories

This is ricotta pudding from Elizabeth David’s book Is there a Nutmeg in the House? The book is blue and there is somewhere on it a picture of quinces. In a heretical gesture, I added some dark chocolate, masquerading as raisins. I’m fairly sure that ED would not have approved. She would have spoken sharply. And of my decision to throw in some Feta, to substitute strained Greek yoghurt, to add honey, as I have done occasionally, she would have regarded me coolly. I would have known this was not wise from the dip in temperature in the room.

It’s no surprise to me that she’d been an actress and had come to her writing life after failure in that department. I’ve always loved her writing; the recipe here for ricotta pudding (budino di ricotta) is simple and feels quite underwritten, basic almost. There is none of the hand holding we have now in cookery books. My mother remembers her kitchen shop in Pimlico in the sixties, remembers meeting her there, and watched as ED wrapped in tissue paper a present for my grandmother, to be shipped off later to Sydney.

It was an odd time then, hard to define when you haven’t lived it, but stories abound of London in the late Fifties, then the Sixties. It was this beatnik, makeshift place of eternal, random, spontaneous parties, according to my mother. ED appeared to be the only vaguely sniffy one there. But it was nice of her to wrap my mother’s present.

There was another figurehead at the time who gets talked of – Robert Carrier. Just before I was born, my parents owned a flat in Camden Passage, close to his restaurant. I think back then, you could afford to be a bit arbitrary and eccentric about food and flounce about a bit. Because people didn’t know about ratatouille and ricotta. These things came from the Continent, which a lot of people hadn’t explored in any great depth. And there had been rationing.

My mother knew more than most only because she had done the six week boat journey from Sydney, part of the first Push that included Clive James, Barry Humphries etc. and had stopped off along the way. She stayed in a brothel in Naples. But these are not my stories to tell. All I can tell you is how the book feels to read, and how it reminds me of the people who are still around, family friends in their eighties now and nineties, and how demure and evocative they can make an omelette seem. A collection of wooden spoons are there not just for show. An aura of quiet descends in the room, there are no winking red lights, no computer leads, and I find myself becalmed.

There’s the occasional sharpness if I lose the thread of the conversation, overwhelmed by central heating in a small space. A telling off is part of the deal somewhere, sometimes by accident I might break a chair. But on the whole it’s a relief not to be modern for a while. The food is delicious, simple, frugal, effortless. There is delight in the dish.

Ricotta pudding

Adapted from Elizabeth David, Is There A Nutmeg in the House?

I prefer strained Greek or Turkish yoghurt here to nasty supermarket ricotta. If you can find fresh, or even better if you can make it yourself, it will transform the dish. Ricotta is slightly drier, less silky than strained yoghurt. Not wishing to confuse, curd cheese is also lovely. I’m not imagining you’ll be as common as me and add chocolate, but if you have some raisins and some rum or marsala it’s a lovely addition. You can use honey here as well. And ground almonds instead of flour – ED does in her other cheese-cake recipes. She’s not here to tell you off.

100g raisins (optional)

4 tbsp rum

Butter, for greasing

3 tbsp plain flour (or ground almonds)

400g fresh ricotta or strained Greek or Turkish yoghurt

Pinch of sea salt

4 eggs

6 heaped tablespoons of caster sugar (or to taste)

Nutmeg

Grated zest of 1 lemon

Soak the raisins (if using) in the rum for a few hours until plump. Heat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4. Butter a 25cm plain cake tin or oven-proof dish of about 1.5 litre capacity. Beat the ricotta or yoghurt until smooth. Beat in 1 whole egg and the three yolks, 4 heaped tablespoons of sugar, the salt, flour/almonds, the lemon zest, and a good grating of nutmeg. Use a whisk to get rid of any lumps. Finally, stir in the raisins, along with any rum left in the bowl. Beat the egg whites until they hold soft peaks. Keep beating, gradually adding the remaining sugar, until you have a thick, glossy meringue that stays in the bowl if you hold it upside down. Stir a heaped tablespoonful of the meringue into the cheese mixture to loosen it, then lightly fold in the rest, keeping as much air in the mix as you can.

Pour into the prepared tin or dish and give it a gentle shake to level the surface. Bake for about 35 – 40 minutes, or until golden and set. Leave to cool to room temperature (it will sink). Eat cold – perhaps with cream. Lovely with some sharp, honeyed rhubarb.

Early Nigel

31 Saturday Jan 2015

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 18 Comments

Tags

Cookbook, Drama school, England, Food, Growing up, Ingredients, Meat, Nigel Slater, Poetry

I recently went to visit my friend Claudia who I’ve known for 18 years and who lives in the wilds of North Essex. It is the sort of relationship where we often forget to be in touch, and because of the fact that I’ve been in LA, things have happened to one another that neither of us have had much access to. Stuff has happened. She has had three children, who have grown up despite me. They built a house I didn’t see or really know much about so long was it in the making. But we are great friends.

I met Claudia on the first day of drama school. I think I was wearing tweeds. Our friendship has been characterised by food and poetry, packets of ten Silk Cut and the very first intimacy we ever shared which was that we both experienced dizzy spells; Claudia because of Ménière’s disease and me because of recurring labrynthitis. In the background a man sang. We sat on armchairs – part of some kind of scene study.

I was, and continue to be, eight years older than her. However, she was often cast as my mother, screaming at me from the top of the stairs as I ‘eloped’ on one particular occasion with a voice and bearing so like my actual mother I was unable to carry on down the stairs and out the door. Our relationship continued in this vein, with me living in vacant houses, friends’ sofas, the odd floor and Claudia settled into domesticity in Clapham with an actual kitchen. I got to know it well, and her brother who lived there and who once told me that you were upper class if you could circle your wrist with your forefinger and thumb, and I couldn’t. I don’t think he meant anything by it and he was always very friendly, even when I set off the burglar alarm and the police called him at work.

Food and poetry was our thing. Nigel Slater, Louis MacNiece, roast potatoes in goose fat, huge bricks of cheese, shards of shredded lamb, Elizabeth Bishop, Philip Larkin, Vicki Feaver. We would rehearse each other either in an empty acting room or at the kitchen table for the strange ritual of Speech and Verse where we were regularly sent before a panel of judges who talked a terrifying nonsense about ‘interplay rhythm’ and us having no legs.

And all the while, we ate fish finger sandwiches, smoked and talked about squid ink. Because there was the River Cafe and Early Nigel and a kind of romping carnivorous lust that predated the gluten-free, rather more anaemic times we live in now.

It’s a difficult thing to sustain, eating like that all the time and then spending the rest of your money on Imodium. It was a bit Francis Bacon, a bit tiring, and a long time ago. This time it was the quiet I needed, the complete absence of sound.

We went for a walk and watched the ponies break into an edifying gallop, then rub their conker arses on the ground, legs to the sky, the smell of manure and hay, their velvety noses, the bare clink of metal. There was a frost that covered the ground, a spare-looking snow. There was the house itself which is all wood, low-slung beams, an old Nissan hut, a disused airfield. There were the children, who were a bit magic, one of whom is my god-daughter who reads with the same relentless drive as I did; a book a day, as if it were some kind of illness.

What has survived? Because so often in those very site-specific friendships, it is hard when those things, those props, have been taken away. I can’t drink coffee anymore, a thing we obsessed about; must be a stove-top percolator, milk must be warmed, cup must be hot etc. The colour a manilla cigar. Bread is hard; we loved bread, slathered with butter and a thick and amateur marmalade. Bacon. I’m not that person anymore, or not much of her remains. But what we had was lamb, the kids did too with spinach I believe and orzo. We all ate it. And since I’ve come back all I’ve done is roast lamb: lamb shoulder, lamb leg, tarred with oil and salt, rosemary somewhere deep inside, garlic charred to oblivion.

Lamb survived. (And Claudia did too, still my mother). I got the recipe from Nigel Slater’s Real Cooking – a book I would heartily recommend if winter food is exerting its bleak tyranny. It’s one of his early ones; you see his hands a lot, it’s spare and simple. A bit of poetry I think.

Roast leg of lamb with garlic and rosemary

Adapted from Nigel Slater, Real Cooking

“Fat – sticky and rich – is the bonus for the pork eater. With lamb it is the bones. The sweet, crunchy, brittle bones of a cutlet, or the softer lump in a chump chop, are a true treat for those not too proud to gnaw at the table. Lamb clings to its bones more tightly than does pork or beef, demanding that we pick up and chew. The meat around the bone being the sweetest of course. Cutlery is for wimps.” Nigel Slater, Real Cooking

Olive oil, not much

A leg of lamb (about 2kg in weight)

A few bushy sprigs of rosemary

6 garlic cloves, peeled

Sea salt

Set the oven to 230C/450F. Pierce the fat of the leg of lamb with the point of a sharp knife. Into each hole stuff a small sprig of rosemary and a slice of garlic (do the rosemary first, and then shove in garlic – according to NS this is easier). My lamb is rarely so invaded as Joe likes herbs to be ‘shown’ to the meat (see below).

Drizzle and dab fat and aromatics with oil. Grind over some salt (don’t go overboard here). Place in roasting tin and leave to roast for about 15 minutes per 500g, in other words about an hour. After 20 minutes, turn the oven temperature down to 200C/400F. If you wanted to include potatoes, which NS does, then set the lamb directly on one of the oven shelves and place roasting tin of 6 large scrubbed potatoes, sliced, underneath with a few shakings of salt and daubs of butter. The lamb will drip all over the potatoes which you may like.

Remove the lamb from the oven and let it rest for about 20 minutes before carving. After that first meal, I use the bones and any adhered meat for a broth which I then eat for days.

Pause

07 Saturday Jun 2014

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 20 Comments

Tags

Cookbook, Food, Frugal, Ingredients, London, Recipes, Stories

Yesterday I put away most of my cookery books. The majority went into boxes, which were marked ‘cookery books (keep)’. I didn’t realize objects had the collective name of ‘chotskies’ and that anything from shells to bowls to framed photos could come under this new heading. Something about seeing all these books lined up, sentry-like, on the floor gave me pause. How many cookery books do I need? Or use? The sheer bulk of them was imposing, but sitting down to read them felt like displacement, a putting off of something. I returned from England to an entire bookcase full of recipes, gathering dust, slouching in the heat, cascading one on top of the other and tried to remember when I had developed this learned helplessness in the kitchen. For years and years I think I owned three cookery books. Which I barely used. They had pencil drawings of legumes and dainty fruits, or there were close-up photos of salad and cake where everything looked vaguely menacing and shapeless.

Mostly I was drawn to implements, because during my teens and twenties I lived ad hoc often for months at a time in such and such a place, as an au pair, as a cook in Venice, in someone’s converted garage in Rome, in a deserted flat in Peckham. I made do with what had been left behind or what I could use when the owners weren’t looking. What I could eat, how much of something I could take before it was hidden from me or labelled ‘keep out!’. The borrowed cup and saucer, the endless pilfered spoons, the bag of buns that would be tea. All those cafe and deli jobs when I lived on ham scraps and Danish pastries. Food was fodder, fuel to power me through the walk from one postcode to another.

When I was in my late twenties, I worked as a live-in au pair for a French couple in the London borough of Fulham, which subsidized my drama school fees. They had a three-year-old boy called Antoine and it was my job to look after him in the evenings and weekends. They had the best kitchen that I’d ever seen and the best implements. It was never made clear whether I was allowed to cook, so mostly I didn’t. I’d eat bread and butter, toast, a banana, things I could pick up surreptitiously and leave the room with; four biscuits curled into my palm, a slab of cheddar.

They had a food processor. This was new to me and very exciting. I had no idea how it worked, so when they were out I’d experiment; the best thing it did was shred carrots. Mounds and mounds of desiccated carrot, damp and juicy, which I’d salt and fleck with oil and lemon. They had no cookery books and I had none either, because I was living with the bare minimum, in a small lemon-yellow room next to Antoine at the top of the house.

I made the shredded carrot every day and ate it with an upended tin of tuna. I think that was how I never got ill. I read fiction, not Nigel or Nigella who only existed then in the margins, if I walked through a bookshop, say, or flicked through the television channels. I was never invited to cross the threshold of the French couple’s sitting room. I’d stand in the doorway and we’d have conversations, but I was never invited in. Only if Antoine saw me would he take my hand and lead me to the sofa.

Sometimes, in the night I’d hear him crying next door, and though I was given instructions never to go in, I often would, and he’d be standing on the other side clutching his trucks to his chest in a way I still think about. He also gave me food, invited me to sit with him at the kitchen table, and took me into the garden. Sometimes I ate my shredded carrot with him and he’d eat his mashed apple or his sausages (and then I’d eat what he left behind). I hope he is doing well.

I read this book by Alain Coumont at Le Pain Quotidien in Larchmont. I resisted the urge to buy it and instead I read it. I hope the simplicity of this recipe doesn’t offend, but really it’s not a recipe, more an idea; a thought about food that you might have and decide to execute. It’s permission more than anything. And it reminded me of what I did before books told me to. When I just fed myself.

Carrot and lemon salad

Serves 4 as a side dish or appetizer
4-6 carrots, peeled, julienned or finely grated
2 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil
Juice of half a lemon
3 pinches of sea salt
Black pepper

Put the shredded/grated carrot in a bowl and mix with the oil, lemon juice and salt. Mix gently with your hands if you like, and then add some freshly ground black pepper. Serve quickly.

Battered Blossoms

24 Wednesday Jul 2013

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 17 Comments

Tags

Cookbook, Cooking, Food, Ingredients, Italy, Recipes, 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 girl in the area) home, loitered and then dispersed to find other prey. I remember these blossoms in their crispy 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 crispy.

A field of fennel

17 Monday Jun 2013

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 22 Comments

Tags

Cookbook, Food, Herbs, Ingredients, Italy, Los Angeles, Recipes, Stories, Walking

A couple of days ago I went for a walk in Lake Hollywood, my usual amble in the morning. It is a flat, paved trail that loops round the lake – not actually a lake at all but a reservoir surrounded by a forbidding high wire fence – and was prepared to be unamazed by it. There have been a few interesting sightings in the past (Mila and Ashton swanning past, Valene from Knots Landing ‘jogging,’ an eagle having a bath), but I was not in the mood. I wanted to walk until my legs ached, with my head down.

There was no sun to speak of, but a heavy haze, and the occasional patch of vague brightness trying to push through. Two ducks sat in the muck, pecking at some iridescent greenery. After a while, one stopped pecking and just stood there. Come on, you’ve had your fun, it seemed to say. So I moved on. I sat on a grassy bank to rest my legs for a bit and watched a family of coyotes tumble down the side of the hill, stopping to bite each other’s ears and roll around. They appeared one at a time, looked up and down the trail, and loped across to a hole in the fence, slipping through to the other side where the water was.

Up ahead there was a hole for me too, an unusual clearing where normally there is a closed gate. I walked through and up the hill and was surrounded by an oasis of wild flowers, bees, butterflies and wild fennel. I sat down on a stone mound.

Wild fennel is difficult to photograph. From afar it is just a sea of green feathers, a strange network of tentacles, a web. Up close it is too fine and long and wavy. You can never get it all in. So in the end I rolled a few in my hand and took in the smell. I was expecting licorice, the tarry, sticky sweets from childhood, but not lemon, rubber, grass, aniseed, hay, manure, mint, cough mixture and ferns.

Even as I walked past, this strange concoction spilled out. Wild fennel is a herb (or edible weed depending on who you read), and grows abundantly around the Mediterranean, and in Mediterranean climates such as southern California. It is easily confused with fennel the bulb, which has the same curly fronds up top, but is used principally for the fresh, clean chunkiness of its base. The herb, all frilly leaf, is used a lot in southern Italian cooking, particularly Sicilian, where they like to stuff the finocchio selvatico in their sardines, and the seeds in their sausages.

Umbel beginnings

It felt like a real find, this place. There was no one else around, and though I could hear the voices of walkers on the main path, I was hidden from view. It is an economical landscape, because it is so dry. Looking only for lushness, meadows, and nodding snowdrops – Englishness – it’s easy to miss everything else. This field was gold, the dull, dry gold of old grass. Everything was matted, tufted and coarse with occasional bolts of bright colour from thistles. I had to give up the decision to be unmoved. The sun finally came out and I went and sat on the bridge and watched the turtles sunbathing at the lake’s edge.

Fennel grows often in the most unprepossessing places: wastelands, car parks and even in the street. It propagates like mad, and is considered something of a pest here and a fire hazard. Don’t pick it where there is a good chance a dog (or person) has peed on it. The spring and early summer is when you get the fresh green shoots, the wavy fronds, that are used for stuffing into fish and strewing over fava beans and ricotta, risotto, and as a base for pesto.

The simplest treatment is to boil them until tender and serve with olive oil and lemon juice. The autumn is when you get the seeds. This is when the fronds die back and you get the dried, burnt-looking stalks. However mangled they look, the plants will be full of seed clusters. They look like little umbrellas (hence the name Umbelliferae, the family to which fennel belongs). You can pick off the ‘umbels’, separate the seeds from the pods and dry them. They last forever.

After eating fennel pretty exhaustively all week, this recipe makes the most sense to me, gustatorially (I’m not sure that’s a word). It’s a classic pairing of fava beans (broad beans in England) and ricotta with wild fennel fronds. Use the bushy stalks of bulb fennel in its place, or some mint, or whatever takes your fancy. You could use peas as well as, or instead of, fava beans.

Fava beans, ricotta and wild fennel

Adapted from Matthew Fort, Sweet Honey, Bitter Lemons

Serves 4

1 small onion

1 bunch of wild fennel

4 big handfuls of fava beans

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

Ricotta or feta

When fava beans are older, husk them and pinch off their skins to reveal the bright green pods beneath – boiling them for 3 minutes will help shuck off their coats, if need be. Heat a glug of olive oil in a pan. Slice the onion finely and chop the fennel into small bits. Wilt them for a couple of minutes and then add the beans. Cook very gently for about 15 minutes. Add a little water if the beans are drying out before becoming tender. Serve with ricotta, or feta if you prefer a bit of salty sharpness. This is lovely served alongside some prosciutto crudo.

Honey Ice

30 Thursday May 2013

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 26 Comments

Tags

Claudia Roden, Cookbook, Dessert, Food, Ice cream, Ingredients, Mediterranean, Recipes, Stories, Travel

This recipe comes from Invitation to Mediterranean Cooking by Claudia Roden. It is a small, plain book with no photographs, and at first I afforded it only a few cursory glances. And then I read the introduction and it made sense. I reread it and I was transported. Now I’m happily immersed. She sweeps through the history of the Mediterranean with such blithe eloquence that all I could hope to do here is a blundering précis of facts and impressions. What has stayed with me is the culinary unity of all sixteen or so countries that nestle around this ‘little inland sea.’ And the sheer amount of traffic.

First there were the colonizers – the Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans – who brought their holy trinity of wheat, olives and vines. Then the area was positively over-run by invaders: the Arabs who occupied parts of Spain and Sicily for hundreds of years and introduced new trading routes and cultivated sugar cane, apricots and oranges, pomegranates, dates and aubergines. The Normans and the Republic of Venice also had a go, and then the Ottoman Empire muscled in. And then there were the travellers: traders, troubadours, jongleurs, spice merchants, whole populations uprooted – Tunisians were sent to Palermo in Sicily to build the cathedral, for instance. It must have been a nightmare for Social Services.

What I loved was the idea of the Mediterranean as its own world, distinct from the northern regions of its own countries. So the cuisine of Andalusia would have more in common with southern Italy than with Asturias, say. Provence and Sicily are related. They use the same clay pots and wood-burning stoves. There is olive oil, the juice of lemons, garlic, tomatoes, almonds, quince, basil and wild marjoram. Food is pummeled, slaked, ground with a pestle and mortar, little old women in black keen and worry beads in their gnarled hands, stopping as you pass to ask why you’re not married and how much you weigh.

And that made me think of all the seemingly disconnected events that had happened to me on my travels there. Rather than random or isolated, one event now began to inform the other. So the gesture of the café owner in Paxos in Greece who brought us a bottle of wine and two glasses as we were about to bed down for the night on the beach (with one sheet and two bin bags) was somehow related to the gesture of the boy (whose name I will never forget: Zoran) who boarded my train in Dubrovnik carrying a mattress and shared his lunch with me. The woman who complained we had flooded her bathroom in Corfu was definitely related to the man who ordered me out of his ballet class in Venice. I remember the alleyways in Tunisia and Amalfi, getting lost in darkness, the sounds of bare feet on stone, and the fear it was my stepmother.

There are big differences between the eastern Mediterranean and western, and there are many culinary distinctions between the countries in both regions. But for now, I like to imagine the similarities. We are encouraged in life to unmake connections, to see things as mere coincidence. But in the Mediterranean, it’s the same sun, the same sea, the same fish, the same herbs; all that empire on the chopping board. All those languages in one clay pot.

When it came to choosing a Mediterranean sweet to feature here, I was almost limp with temptation. “My soul responds to a mere vanilla ice smeared out into the thick glass of an Italian ice-cream vendor”, wrote Compton Mackenzie in First Athenian Memories, and despite the turrons, the sfogliatelle and the cassata Siciliana, I think ice cream is always a good place to start.

The honey you use can be characterful and not particularly sweet; remember honey is much more complex than sugar, and can range from treacly, nutty and even mildly bitter. Most honey is polyfloral – meaning the nectar has been taken from different floral sources – and is generally known as ‘wildflower’. Monofloral honey is when the bees have taken nectar from only one plant species (although the jury is out on whether a honey can ever be truly singular, because bees aren’t that picky and like all sorts), and the flavour is more pronounced. Some of the most highly prized honey comes from Sicily: orange blossom, the honey from zagara (the flower of the lemon tree), chestnut and thyme. Sardinian honey from strawberry plants has a uniquely bitter flavour and is light green in hue. This ice cream recipe comes originally from Provence where they use lavender honey from their famous fields. There are fields of lavender here in Mediterranean southern California too, of course, as well as some wonderful urban honey around LA. Happy honey hunting.*

Honey ice cream

Adapted from Invitation to Mediterranean Cooking by Claudia Roden

I suggest pairing this ice cream with something resinous and rich (I want to say lusty), such as roasted figs (go to my recipe here), fig jam, or even better, quince paste (otherwise known as membrillo, recipe here). That said, some poached apricots or plums would also be pretty divine. And some chopped pistachios thrown from above.

As to milk, I used goat’s milk which I know is not to everyone’s taste. If you’re not sure you want goaty ice cream, go for cow’s milk. Sheep’s milk would be a lovely alternative.

500ml milk

4 large egg yolks

150g lavender, acacia or other clear, distinctive honey

150ml double/thick cream (I used crème fraîche)

1 tbs orange blossom water

Boil the milk. If you are using goat’s milk, let it almost come to a boil, but take it off the heat just before. Beat the egg yolks to a pale cream, then beat in the honey, the cream, and then finally a tablespoon of the hot milk. Gradually add the rest of the milk.

Return the mixture to the pan and stir with a wooden spoon over a low heat until it thickens to a light cream. Do not let it boil or it will curdle. Let it cool, stirring occasionally to stop the mixture forming a skin. I accelerate this process by transferring the mixture to a bowl and putting it in the sink filled with some ice cubes and tap water. Stir in the orange blossom water. Cover the bowl with cling-film/plastic wrap and put in the fridge to chill thoroughly. If you have an ice cream maker, follow the manufacturer’s instructions. This was my route, and the photo above and below is a soft-serve version directly after churning, and then a firmer set, having frozen the churned ice cream for a few hours. If you don’t have an ice cream maker, according to Claudia you can put the bowl directly in the freezer and freeze overnight or for at least 5 hours before serving. You can serve this ice cream straight from the freezer.

Recipe List

I have created a permanent recipe list if you’re interested in finding something specific. I will refine the categories as I go, but for now it’s a start. Hope it helps and you enjoy having a rummage through the archives.

*Addition 2nd June 2013

I found some lovely honey at the farmers’ market today from Bill’s Bees and wanted to share the discovery. I tried their local buckwheat honey which was strong, hearty and malt-like. The orange blossom honey was beautiful and surprising: clear like blown glass, smooth and silky, and floral without being overpoweringly sweet. There was also a small kick of acid when I was least expecting it, right at the end when I was about to ask another question. If you are in the area I would recommend giving them a visit.

Buckwheat honey

Orange blossom honey

Give peas a chance

07 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

Cookbook, Cooking, Elizabeth David, Food, Ingredients, Italy, Recipes, Spring, Yoghurt, Yogurt

There is something quite lovely about peas. You can grow them easily and their tendrils are pretty, curling things that latch on to poles and wind their way upwards and sideways as if trying to escape the garden, and their fate, in slow motion.

If you’re feeling in any way disconnected from nature, or yourself, sitting down to shell a mound of pea pods will slow your heart rate and give you room to ponder. You can watch the news and get a good rhythm going, with a pot for the empty pods and one for the peas. Use the empty pods for broth and wrap the peas in a damp towel so they don’t dry out. I was surprised by the colour and the taste. We have been seduced by the frozen pea’s excessive sweetness, its nursery softness, and now it’s hard to go back. Pretend you’re Edwardian.

I am not decrying frozen peas – I love them and would happily live on them all year round. But it’s a shame in the spring to pass by peas in the pod. Their tendrils are sold by the wodge at farmers’ markets here (above in their fetching blue rubber bands).

You can use the leaves as a salad ingredient or wilt them in butter. They’re lovely in a frittata along with some peas and scallions. And then there is bacon, of course. Or pancetta, if you’re a bit posh. And ham, properly thick and strongly permeating. Peas also have a natural affinity with ricotta – or perhaps it is I who have the affinity.

Ricotta (meaning “re-cooked” from the whey of semi-hard cheeses) is a soft, sheep’s milk cheese originally from Rome and is at its best in spring, eaten spankingly fresh with a little salt and black pepper. It has a wonderful blankness, aerates easily and doesn’t smother like cream can, meaning that the peas remain the star of the show. I know people make ricotta; so much is dependent on the quality of the milk. I made ‘yoghurt cheese’ instead (also known as labneh), and treated it in a similar way, along with some lemon zest and a touch of rosemary.

Both recipes below are inspired by Italian Food by Elizabeth David, a book I can’t read for long without the need to rest my head in my hands and inhale memories of my time there. It is almost impossible not to feel longing. I love food, what can I say? And Italy is where for me the heart of good food lives. Espresso and cake, olive oil, vinegar, leaves, lemons, hot cornetti steaming at midnight from a paper bag, tomatoes crackling with salt. Thinnest of thin pizza, charred and warm. I am a ruined woman.

Piselli al Prosciutto (green peas and ham)

Adapted from Elizabeth David, Italian Food

2lbs shelled or frozen peas

A small onion

1 oz (or a small knob) of butter

3 oz of very good cooked ham cut into strips

Melt the chopped onion in the butter, and let it cook very gently, so that it softens without browning. Put in the shelled (or frozen) peas and a little water. After 5 minutes, add the ham. Add a little more water here if it needs it. In another 5-10 minutes the peas should be ready.

Yoghurt cheese with lemon zest and rosemary

Adapted from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Easy Cheesy, The Guardian

Makes about 350g. If you want this for pudding instead, withhold the pepper, serve with a scattering of berries, or dried fruit, some toasted nuts and a drizzle of honey.

1/2 tsp black peppercorns

1kg whole milk organic yoghurt

1 tsp of salt

1 small sprig rosemary leaves, finely chopped

Zest of a lemon

Extra virgin olive oil, for preserving

Crack the pepper in a pestle and mortar, or with the end of a rolling pin in a bowl, until it’s slightly coarser than if it came from a pepper mill. Stir it into the yoghurt with the salt, lemon zest and rosemary, then spoon the mixture into a scrupulously clean jelly bag or a double layer of damp muslin/cheesecloth (or a sterilized hankie). Place in a sieve resting over a bowl or jug in the fridge (or suspend it over the sink or hanging from a door knob somewhere cool), for two days.

Discard the whey. Lightly oil your hands and roll the yoghurt cheese into balls and place in a sterilized jar. Pour enough oil over to cover. They’ll keep in this way for a few weeks in the fridge. When you’re ready to use a ball, you could roll it in some finely chopped herbs and a further scattering of zest. Or if you want to go the Labneh route, you could roll them in spices such as cumin or paprika.

Jammy

29 Friday Mar 2013

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Afternoon tea, Cookbook, Dessert, Food, Ingredients, Jam, Lucas Hollweg, Recipes, Strawberries

I feel not particularly enamoured of jam and I’m not much of a jam maker as a result. Perhaps it is because of the often unrelenting sweetness. And the strawberries I had to hand were already sweet, so adding sugar and watching the whole thing boil volcanically in a pot seemed far too one-dimensional for my tastes; a cascade of red, sugary lava. But enter lemon juice and the jam became richer, tarter and more interesting. The strawberries became altogether more themselves. I upped the ante with the lemon juice because I wanted my jam with a bit of spine. However, balsamic vinegar is also an option; according to Nigella Lawson, they make the strawberries “strawberrier.” I believe her. If you can preserve some of the berries in their whole state, this would lend the jam a jewel-like aspect, I should imagine. Mine fell apart, a quivering mess.

Felicity Cloake’s recipe was the one I plumped for. She advocates the juice of two lemons and I went for three, but other than that, I followed her to the letter. She did all the homework, testing and tasting, and I just did what I was told. Sometimes I like that about recipes.

I’m not sure what it is about strawberries I don’t trust. Perhaps it’s that they no longer taste as they once did, or look neat or darkly red enough. Small lobes of crimson was what I remember, studded with yellowing seeds. And the taste was concentrated, sturdy, and there was juice, goddamit. I doubt what passes for cream nowadays is really the strawberry’s natural mate (what is?). Perhaps leave the cream for the raspberries to come, and simply macerate the strawbs’ – mashed up a bit – in some sugar. There’s something lovely about watching them leach their winey juice. Anyway, the jam was very good – a soft set, but definitely jam as opposed to strawberry sauce.

It is good spooned straight from the jar, Pooh-style. A warm, buttered scone is lovely, with the requisite pot of tea alongside. Here you have cold jam caving into a yellow pat of butter, and of course there are dancing crumbs to lick. But honestly, if you have some homemade strawberry jam, try it with some fresh cream cheese – a version of coeur à la crème. The plainness is the thing, substantial and not overly sweet, lemon-flecked, but not trying to compete. And if you have some good strawberries to hand, by which I mean on the small side, uniformly red, no whiteness within and definitely not hollow, then resist the temptation to cook them at all. No cobblers, pies or tarts, no jam, no heat, no flame. Let them rest. They’ve been through enough.

Coeur à la crème

This is a standard French country dish to serve with soft fruit and to showcase preserves in the winter months such as apricot and strawberry. It’s made using fromage frais – fresh curd cheese – and either crème fraîche or double cream. Yogurt cheese or cream cheese, such as mascarpone, can be used instead of the fromage frais. If you want to set it in a heart-shaped mould, which is traditional, then the cheese and cream need to be drained through muslin overnight. The heart-shaped mould will have holes in it, so you will have, quite literally, a bleeding heart (whey, in this case, not blood though). If you don’t drain the cream cheese mixture, it will be a bit swimmy, but no one has complained so far.

Lucas advocates serving these with some strawberries soaked in red wine and basil leaves, which is also lovely. Or do both – jam and wine-soaked berries. Although it sounds it, it isn’t overkill. Think ‘islands in the stream’ (that is what we are etc).

Inspired by and adapted from Lucas Hollweg, Good Things to Eat

½ a vanilla pod, split lengthways, or a few drops of natural vanilla extract

250g (9 oz) cream cheese*

250ml (9fl oz) double/heavy cream

2 tbs caster/superfine sugar

Zest of ½ a lemon

Scrape the seeds from the vanilla pod and whisk into the cream cheese (or add a few drops of vanilla extract). Pour in the cream, sugar and lemon zest and whisk everything together until well combined.

As you can see, I used a cookie cutter here to get some sort of shape. I put the moulds in the fridge to set; this is where you might want to drain off any liquid that has collected before serving.

*Interesting cream cheeses

I used a goat’s cream cheese here from the Meyenberg company, in Central California, but there are other lovely ones to try. Neufchâtel (from which American cream cheese is derived) is one. Cowgirl Creamery does fromage blanc (though I’ve yet to try it) and Creole cream cheese, listed in the Ark of Taste, and championed by Deborah Madison, was made originally by French settlers in New Orleans and is making a comeback. So if you’re down that way, nab some; apparently, it works very well in coeur à la crème. Failing that, Philadelphia is not to be sniffed at; go for the full-fat version if you like a heft of stickiness.

Strawberry jam

Adapted from Felicity Cloake, Word of Mouth, The Guardian

Makes 4 x 200ml jars

2kg ripe strawberries
1.7kg jam or preserving sugar
Juice of 2-3 lemons

Wash (if necessary, and if not, simply rub off any dirt or dust) and then hull (cut the tops off) the strawberries and discard any rotten ones. If you wash them after you’ve pulled the little ‘plug’ of leaves, the strawberries will become waterlogged, and in the words of Jane Grigson: “A strawberry that has become acquainted with water loses its virtue.” Pat dry very quickly. Set aside about 10 of the smallest berries, and then mash the rest up into a rough pulp. Put into a wide, thick-bottomed pan, add the sugar and the lemon juice, and bring slowly to the boil. Add the remaining strawberries to the pan, and put a saucer in the freezer.

Boil the jam for about 15 minutes, stirring regularly checking the setting point every minute or so during the last 5 minutes. To do this, take the cold saucer out of the freezer, put a little jam on it, and put it back in to cool for a minute. If it wrinkles when you push it with your finger, then it’s done. Strawberry jam is unlikely to set very solid though, so don’t expect the same results as you would with a marmalade. Take off the heat and skim off any scum. Pour into sterilized jars and cover with a disc of wax paper. Seal and store.

Addendum posted April 3rd

I was stupid not to add that if you want good strawberries (and I’m assuming you do) and you live in the Los Angeles area, visit McGrath Family Farms. Jam-makers and strawberry lovers swear by them.

A mess of meringue

08 Friday Mar 2013

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Australia, Cookbook, Cooking, Dessert, Fruit, Ingredients, Meringue, Pavlova, Pudding, Recipes, Tropical fruit

The thing about meringue is that it’s two quite different things in one. And it is precisely this interplay – the squidgy, marshmallow centre combined with the shatteringly fragile shell that makes it so addictive. And why shop-bought ones rarely work. And that almost colourless colour; palest fawn, the exact shade of my favourite sofa which is currently doing time in an outbuilding in Suffolk. Apparently, according to almost every meringue writer I’ve encountered, the trick is to never ever open the oven door. Go away for the weekend if you must. The meringue must dry out, preferably overnight with the oven off. It is very hard to wait, because a meringue is so enticing, so visually sumptuous. But try.

This recipe is in essence a pavlova, a pudding made for, and named after, the Russian dancer Anna Pavlova, who visited Australia in the thirties. It is known principally as an Australian pudding, then, but its roots lie in the European pâtisserie tradition. What makes it particularly Australian here is the way it is served; with cream and passion fruit, mainly. And the shape which is similar to a large, round nest. Being half Australian, I expected to know this pudding. I certainly remember the fruit; dripping mangoes for breakfast, the flesh scored into succulent cubes. Passion fruit in its calloused skin, all green and beady, and lychees, like sinister eyeballs. Everything dripped, I remember. It was hot and endlessly wet, either from the afternoon storms or from our torrential sweat. It was my first experience of scale.

Sydney was big and new, and the highways ran through the city in a way that seemed to gobble everything up. London afterwards felt like toy town. I have always believed in small. I never wanted a bigger bedroom growing up. Sydney seemed vaguely hostile to me. Tall and glossy, with nowhere to hide. Little did I know, LA was waiting.

Choose sour, sharp fruit to balance the sweet blandness of the cream and meringue. Passion fruit, unblowsy strawberries, loganberries or raspberries all work. Of course mangoes are beautiful here too; slippery and lavish as a bar of luxury soap. Nigel Slater, whose recipe I am following, would disapprove of such a cornucopia of fruits for a pavlova, but as I couldn’t find any ripe passion fruit, I arrived at the solitary kiwi. They grow here with gay abandon, though with less commercial success nowadays due to their excessive watering demands. Their general ubiquity (they travel and store well) can make them seem rather ordinary, and they’re often horribly hard. But when they have had the chance to sit and soften, the taste can be mellow and delightful – tart apple, strawberry and a melodious banana combine. I blitzed the kiwis in the blender and crowned them with a few slivers of mango here and they were a hit. And I like the sparkly seeds.

Local kiwi fruit

I have to confess I love Kerstin Rodgers‘s idea of dribbling salty caramel over the whole thing, although this is verging on the orgiastic. Frankly, you need to get naked. Maybe next time. As to size, I decided on several small nests rather that one big one as it felt less perilous. Alternatively, pile the whole lot in voluptuous folds on to a baking tray and bake for an hour.

Pavlova

Adapted from Nigel Slater, Appetite

Enough for 8-10

6 large free-range egg whites (use the yolks for citrus curd)

Pinch of salt

350g (12 oz) caster/superfine sugar

300ml (10 fl oz) whipping cream

Some ideas for fruit

8 Passion fruit, cut in half – the pulp spooned over the cream

3 kiwi fruit, peeled and blitzed in a blender and poured over

A ripe mango, cut in half, sliced and added

Preheat the oven to 140C/275F. Lightly grease 1 large or 2 smaller baking trays and line with non-stick baking paper. Separate the eggs, dropping the whites into an extremely clean bowl, and the yolks into another (always great for curd or ice cream or indeed mayonnaise). It’s important that there is no yolk caught up with the whites as the fat in the egg yolk will stop the whites thickening. Beat the egg whites with the pinch of salt until shiny and thick. You should be able to turn the bowl upside down and have no fall-out. Now add the sugar – do it in two lots slowly (imagine rain), letting the whisk continue to turn at moderate speed. You will feel the mixture begin to thicken with the weight of the sugar. Keep going until the mixture is thick and glossy, but don’t overwhip – this will loosen it, and you want it to be so thick that it takes a while to fall off the whisk. I know there are many who say you should add cornflour (cornstarch) and white wine vinegar at this point, but I am not convinced there is enough of a difference to warrant it.

Drop 8 large spoonfuls of the mixture (about 10 cm/4 in round) on the baking trays and try to fashion a ‘nest’ with a small dip in the middle. Bake for 45 minutes until pale in colour. Then turn off the oven, but do not open the door; leave the meringue alone until it’s completely cool.

Wait until the last minute to prepare the pavlova – if it sits for too long once assembled, the cream and fruit start to soften the meringue. Whip the cream into soft peaks. Spoon some into the centre of each pavlova and let the cream dribble down the sides. Halve the passion fruit and spoon the pulp over the cream, or blitz the kiwi fruit and use in a similar fashion. Drape some mango over the top and tuck in.

If-in-doubt Lemon Tarts

25 Monday Feb 2013

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

Cookbook, Cooking, Dessert, Failure, Food, Ingredients, Lemons, Nonfiction, Recipes, Stories

Sometimes I feel that I’m losing my touch. I’m sure this is normal, but it’s unnerving. How can you go wrong with lemon tart? Anything with lemons, I’m told, and I’m a sure-fire winner. I have a way with the lemon. So I was feeling rather cavalier, particularly as these reminded me of jam tarts. Not so much jam as gel, admittedly, and a bit rubbery. And the way the pastry rose up in the oven was odd, upending the lemon mixture, which lay blank and flabby on the floor of the pan. It was all rather irregular.

I was unsure what to write about this week. Or what to make. Perhaps this was what did it. The Oscars were coming to Hollywood for which we needed to be prepared. Halle Berry and Ben Affleck and various plasticated lovelies would be sashaying down the red carpet, and the road was closed off for days in preparation for this world-changing event. We had people over to watch it live and bet on who would win. I decided to make something with lemons. We have a rather bedraggled-looking lemon tree which produces small, intensely perfumed and rather sweet Meyers, but mainly we just pilfer them from the overhang of other people’s trees. You walk along and pop them in your pocket, while looking innocently around you as if new to the area.

I started off exploring a new recipe. It looked easy, but following a recipe is never just about following instructions. The language is important; it needs to be straight-forward, clear, unfussy. Lyrical is fine but too much information and I am apt to skip things, become impatient. I am not a baking nerd. And an old recipe is like an old friend – you pick up where you left off. One look at the page covered in pencilled amendments and various spillages, and I know we’ve been through something together, this recipe and me. There is also such a thing as muscle memory – the body remembers even if you don’t. A few swipes of a wooden spoon, an egg in the hand about to be cracked and the page warrants only a cursory glance from then on in. So the recipe below is a tried and trusted one – a lovely, simple Rick Stein offering that has never failed me. I have been kicking myself for wasting ingredients, and embarrassed that friends had had to eat something as willfully mediocre as the untried recipe proved to be. I swept the whole thing with a veil of confectioners’ sugar and hoped for the best. And it was fine. But there is a lesson in this, I’m sure – if in doubt, do what you know.

The rather prosaic-looking bars (above) are easier to manage at a party, but go for the classic and classier tart shape if you wish. You can certainly improvise here with other citrus, such as grapefruit, lime and even bergamot, if such a thing exists near you. Passion fruit (the juice of) may work too. However, nothing quite does the lemon’s job. I also add the zest for a bit of textural oomph. Use the left-over squeezed lemons for cleaning the sink.

Lemon tarts

From Rick Stein, Food For All Occasions (Puddings)

For the sweet pastry: (makes about 350g/12 oz)

175g (6 oz) plain flour

A small pinch of sea salt

50g (2 oz) icing/confectioners’ sugar

100g (4 oz) chilled butter, cut into pieces

1 egg yolk

1 – 1½ tsp cold water

For the filling:

6 medium eggs, beaten

3 large lemons

250g (9 oz) caster/superfine sugar

150ml (5 fl oz) double/thick cream

For the pastry – sift the flour, salt and sugar into a food processor or bowl. Add the pieces of chilled butter and work together briefly, either in the food processor or with your fingertips, until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the egg yolk and enough water until the mixture starts to come together into a ball (or add to the processor and process briefly), then turn out on to a lightly floured surface and knead briefly until smooth. Roll the pastry out thinly on a lightly floured surface and use to line a lightly greased, 25cm (10 in), loose-bottomed flat tin, 4cm (1½ in) deep. Prick the base here and there with a fork and chill for 20-30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 200C/400F. Line the pastry case with crumpled greaseproof paper, cover the base with a thin layer of baking beans (or rice) and bake for 12-15 minutes, until the edges are biscuit-coloured. Carefully remove the paper and beans/rice and return the pastry case to the oven for 3-4 minutes. Remove, brush the inside of the case with a little of the beaten egg and return to the oven once more for 2 minutes. Remove and lower the oven temp to 120C/250F.

For the filling – finely grate the zest from 2 of the lemons, then squeeze out enough juice from all the fruit to give you 175ml (6 fl oz). Beat the eggs and sugar together until just mixed but not frothy. Mix in the lemon juice and cream, pour through a sieve into a jug and stir in the lemon zest.

Partly pull out the oven shelf, slide in the pastry case and pour in the filling. Slide the shelf back in and bake the tart for 40-45 minutes, until just set – the mixture should still be quite wobbly in the centre but it will continue to firm up after it comes out of the oven. Remove and leave to cool, but don’t refrigerate it. This tart is best served on the day it is made. Wedges or bars – you decide, and a bit of crème fraîche is lovely alongside.