Greenery & cold blue sky

05 Sunday Jan 2014

Tags

Christmas, England, Food, Herbs, Ingredients, Recipes, Stories, Travel, Yoghurt

I can’t have any more trifle. Is it me or is everything around this time of year yellow? Cauliflower cheese, the aforementioned trifle with its layers of custard and cream and small pillows of sponge soaked in a harrowing and unnamed alcohol. Potatoes, parsnips, pavlova, wheels of varicosely veined cheese, the sweating clay mantle of marzipan draped over a now moribund Christmas cake (thank you, Alan Partridge, for reviving the word ‘moribund’).

I would kill for something green and empty of any tracklements or gravy. Something, as a young friend said recently, ‘farmier’. So it is in search of the farmy – still showing signs of its former life in a field, a bit on the grubby side – that I am featuring horseradish and chives, and beetroot with the tops still on. Admittedly, horseradish is on the spectrum of yellow, but far from viscous, it is cleansing, almost brutal in its sinus clearing properties.

This has been our first English Christmas for four years. I had forgotten what happens; we have had no one there at all, just echoing voices down the phone and talking heads via Skype, that instrument of torture, all smoke and mirrors. Then, all of a sudden, here we all are, sitting in the same overheated room for five and a half days eating individually wrapped chocolates housing an unfamiliar nut combination. Watching films incessantly, grazing like cattle, and forgetting, consciously, all the people who have nothing, and saying that next year we will volunteer for a homeless charity, to try to counteract the obscenity of all the waste. And then watching another film.

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But these have been the highlights: travelling across the country afforded us sweeping views; rivers running red with iron in Somerset, an orange-bibbed pheasant launching itself into the air like a kite, faraway hills lush and dramatic with greenery and cold blue skies, and then the lashing rain that pitter-pattered on our skylight windows at night and came down in zig zags during the day. Frosty exteriors and meltingly warm central heating. Watching my dad play in his jazz band in a pub called The Valiant Soldier and meeting by chance a writer I’ve loved reading in The New Yorker, and admiring her shoes (Tessa Hadley).

Dancing with mum in the kitchen, my uncle playing the ukulele. Pretending to be Pina Bausch. Sharing christmas cake recipes; to ice or not to ice? Feeling for the first time in a long time that I am a version of something familiar, not exotic or an anomaly. My accent no longer ‘adorable’. I am no longer adorable! It’s exhausting, and I’m relieved.

Horseradish (below, mine) is a member of the crucifer family, along with radishes, turnips and mustard and looks like a rather disgusting parsnip. Unpeeled it smells of nothing, but once it is nude, it will make you weep copiously. Open a window. It is best treated in the same way that mustard is – it loves roast beef, glazed ham and sausages – really any fatty meats do well. Fatty, oily fish do too. In fact, I have had so many versions of this beetroot-horseradish-fatty fish-or-meat dish in recent months that I may well be verging on the unseasonal.

Grow your own horseradish with caution; it’s rampant and self-seeds and ‘wants to be’ highly invasive. If you find the root with the leaves still attached you can use them as a salad ingredient, or throw them into a saucepan with a glass of water and boil quickly, treating them as greens, though the leaves of my horseradish are always ravaged and ragged by the time the root is ready and go straight on the compost.

As for chives (Allium schoenoprasum), they add a lovely fresh, oniony grass-like taste – no surprise that they belong to the same family as the onion, leek, garlic and shallot. They have a natural affinity with anything creamy and/or with a nursery blandness such as eggs. Snip them with scissors rather than chop them with a knife. I see them growing ‘wild’ often though I suspect that it may just be a very vigorous, cultivated herb in someone’s abandoned hedge.

Horseradish & chive dressing with roasted beetroot

Adapted from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, The Guardian

About 500g small beets
4 garlic cloves, unpeeled but bashed
1 large sprig fresh thyme (optional)
1 bay leaf (optional)
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
A glug of olive oil

For the dressing
200ml thick yoghurt (Greek is good)
Large squeeze of lemon juice & one garlic clove peeled, bashed and chopped
3 heaped tbsp freshly grated horseradish (more if you’ve got a cold)
A small handful of finely chopped chives, plus more to finish

To serve
4 smoked mackerel fillets or scrambled eggs or an omelette
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat the oven to 200C/390F/gas mark 6. Scrub the beets, but leave them whole, then place on a large piece of foil. Scatter with the garlic, thyme leaves, bay leaf and some salt and pepper, then dribble with oil. Scrunch up the foil to make a sealed parcel, place it on a baking tray and put in the oven. Roast until tender – about 45 minutes for small ones. The beetroots are cooked when a knife slips easily into the flesh. Leave to cool, then top and tail them, and remove the skin. Cut into wedges and place in a large bowl.

Whisk together all the dressing ingredients and season. Divide the beetroots between four plates and dollop the horseradish in the vicinity. Scatter on some more chives, season to taste and serve with lemon wedges and/or some scrambled eggs and/or mackerel fillets.

Yoghurt, a love story

21 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

Claudia Roden, Devon, Food, Goats, Ingredients, Labneh, Recipes, Stories, Yoghurt

When I was growing up, we had goats. Their names were Caramel and Honeybun. They had two kids, but I can’t remember what we called them – I think they were also named after dessert. The goats produced milk, which my mum turned into yoghurt. The yoghurt didn’t set awfully well – there were cracks in it filled with whey. There was often more whey than anything else.

When cold, the yoghurt was fine, but served at room temperature it was as if you were eating the goat’s soul. Warm, bloodless goat, white and liquid and slopping about in the bowl. I believe there was the odd hair. I loved the goats, but they were difficult. They were friendly in an aggressively needy way, a bit like an elderly neighbour who berates you for never visiting. They’d often head-butt us with their knotty foreheads and bleat their metallic tuneless song whenever we approached. I loved their oddly smashed pupils.

In the Seventies in Devon, there were two choices: you grew your own food or you lived on Ski yoghurts, angel cake, Wagon Wheels and frozen carrots. We grew our own things, made our own yoghurt, and accepted it was on another planet to the stuff you could buy. One of the few concessions to the mainstream was an occasional chocolate yoghurt bought from the bakery opposite my school. It was tangy yet sweet and there was a thin layer of darkness where the chocolate had started to solidify. It was magic. This almost made up for the fact that my mother refused to paint her toenails.

Somewhere around this time, we went to Crete on holiday. There is a photo of my dad with long hair standing by a racing bike and a man who looked like Thelma from Scooby Doo, who no one could ever name. A man in the local corner shop raised his hand to a shelf and brought down a Milky Bar whenever I entered, and a wizened old woman peeled cucumbers into the fire. This had something to do with sex.

There was yoghurt here too. I’m fairly certain it was sheep’s yoghurt and it was white, like snow, and came to us in deep drifts in bowls with honey on top. I ate snails, pulling them from their shells with a special prong. There is a smell, a Greek smell, that I very occasionally get a memory of. There is the sea and then the dried and peeling stucco paint from houses, the smell of heat and sand and oregano. Can you smell colour? If so, it is a pale blue and white side by side.

Then I got ill. This is much later. I was in my mid twenties and living and teaching in London. The goats had been sent to the farmyard equivalent of a nursing home. I was in Earls Court and getting progressively worse day by day, teaching in windowless rooms with a fan to recycle the air, my life an endless round of marking and preparing.

Eventually, Crohn’s disease was diagnosed, an inflammatory bowel condition. I entered a world of herbal tea and rice cakes. apple puree and endless discussions about wheat. I was re-introduced to goat’s milk, now an elixir. Baguettes were out, plus fun.

It took me a long time to get well. I accept it will always be a part of my life, that it is here to stay. I cannot be an evangelist for a certain kind of Crohn’s diet. But I’m careful when I need to be; I pare things back, I cut out sugar.

The only thing that has survived it all is the yoghurt. I love the alchemy that takes place under a bare light-bulb in the oven. The taste is unique, and nothing whatsoever like shop-bought. A clean swathe of white brightness – it makes me happy to create it.

Homemade Yoghurt

The basic process is very simple – all you need is a big pot or bowl and a warm place to produce the yoghurt. A candy thermometer here really helps – there are people who do this entirely by feel; I haven’t yet joined their ranks. In a nutshell, you sterilize the milk by heating it, in order to kill the existing bacteria and so it can be fermented by the ‘starter’ yoghurt (Total Greek Yoghurt is good here). Then you have to keep it warm for at least 8 hours so that the culture multiplies and consumes the milk, creating your own yoghurt.

Adapted from Elaine Gottschall, Breaking the Vicious Cycle

Inspired by Claudia Roden, A Book of Middle Eastern Food

2 litres/quarts full fat milk & 125g/1/2 cup plain live yoghurt

1. First, bring the live yoghurt to room temperature. Put the milk into a clean pot, heat it and watch it as it starts to rise, and then simmer for 2 minutes.* The purpose in heating the milk is to kill any bacteria that might be present and interfere with the yoghurt making culture.

*Milk must be heated past 180F (82C) in order to sterilize it, but cow’s milk can tolerate temperatures of up to 212F (100C) while goat’s milk is more delicate and shouldn’t go beyond 185F (85C). This is where a thermometer is helpful.

2. Turn the heat off and allow the milk to cool to between 108F (42C) to 112F (45C) or until you are just about able to stick your finger in the milk and count to ten. Stir well before determining the final temperature. If the milk is too hot when the live yoghurt culture is added, the bacteria may be killed.

3. Beat the yoghurt so that it loosens and looks quite liquid. Pour a little of the milk into the yoghurt and mix thoroughly. Add this slowly to the rest of the milk and mix. Either cover the pot with clingfilm/plastic wrap or its own lid. Now gently place it somewhere warm for 24 hours* (or at least overnight). The airing cupboard is good, or an oven with the light on inside. A heating pad is helpful if you don’t want to give up the oven for that long. You will soon have a lovely softly-set creation; put the pot of yoghurt in the fridge where it will keep for about a week. After the yoghurt has chilled, you can strain it through muslin or cheesecloth to create more of a set, or go further and create yoghurt cheese – otherwise known as Labneh. Don’t throw away the whey; it can be used in soups or baking, and is rich in minerals.

*After 24 hours, the sugar in the milk has been eaten by the bacteria.

Yoghurt, garlic and mint dip

There are endless variations on this theme. It goes well with so many things; mashed into baked aubergine, poured over the top of French beans, and scooped up and dipped into, as the name suggests. You could experiment with other herbs, such as chives, coriander/cilantro or parsley, or add spices such as paprika and cumin.

200g yoghurt (strained, if you like a thicker texture) 1 garlic clove, smashed and finely chopped, 1/2 teaspoon salt, zest of half a lemon and juice to taste, a handful of chopped mint, with some leaves left whole if you like, olive oil. Mix all the ingredients together until well-combined. Dribble with olive oil. Good with flatbread, aubergine and roast lamb.

Give peas a chance

07 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 16 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.

Cucumber Gazpacho

04 Monday Jun 2012

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Food, Greece, Ingredients, Nonfiction, Recipes, Stories, Travel, Yoghurt

I know cucumbers can be a bit ‘whatever.’ I mean, I could go my whole life never missing them. And yet they are fresh and summery and lend themselves beautifully to cold soups as well as interesting herbal combinations. They like a bit of salt and lemon. I can’t work out why so many recipes ask for cucumbers to be peeled and de-seeded. What’s left? Thankfully, the recipe I’m using here is less prissy and allows you to chuck the whole thing into the blender. Which is good because you really get the essence of cucumber – light but with a herbaceous edge – and the seeds are what creates a lot of the juice.

My first memory of cucumbers was in Crete as a child. We were staying with a Greek family. I developed a crush on the son, who was a teenager called Vazeles. I thought he was very sophisticated because he drank his tea with a spoon. I spoke to him in fake Greek a lot and he smiled politely and continued about his business. The thing I remember most though was that whenever I entered the dining room, which was where the whole family congregated, the grandmother would start peeling a cucumber into the fire. She laughed – actually, she cackled – and so did everyone else, including my mother. I have to say, as a child, I couldn’t see the funny side. Even now it seems a bit disturbing; the insinuation was that this act was in some way sexual which was why everyone found it funny. Anyway, if anyone reading this knows of a Greek custom where old ladies start to peel cucumbers into the fire whenever a small child enters, I’d love to hear from you.

I can’t remember where those cucumbers ended up – I mean, in what dish – although it’s fair to surmise it was probably for a Tzatziki, a popular Greek dip made with strained yoghurt, cucumbers, lemon, salt and dill or parsley; a choppier and breadless version of cucumber gazpacho.

If you’re using thick-skinned cucumbers, by which I mean your standard, long, dark green cukes, you may want to peel them as they will have a tougher hide, and may have been waxed. I used thin-skinned Persian cucumbers here, because that’s what I found at the farmers’ market. They’re smaller, but taste the same – in other words, like a cucumber.

The garlic is non-negotiable in my opinion. I really don’t think gazpacho works without it, but you can play around with the intensity. I think three cloves gives you enough of a heady sensation without feeling you’ve been garlic-snorkelling. It’s the cleanness of the cucumber and the sulphurous hit of the garlic that is the key to this dish, so be brave. Stale white bread is a central component of a traditional Spanish gazpacho, and will give the soup a ‘thick cream’ texture. If you use it, I would strain the soup into a bowl before chilling, to remove any rough bits.

As for which herbs to use, mint is traditional, and lovely. Sorrel is less common, and a good reason to experiment. It is a perfect time of year for it. For a spring leaf, it’s incredibly juicy, lemony and refreshing. Can a leaf be creamy? Strangely yes. I hope I’ve piqued your interest.

Cucumber Gazpacho

Serves 4

3 large cucumbers or 6-7 small ones

A small handful of mint or sorrel leaves, stems removed

3 cloves of garlic, crushed

2 tbs extra virgin olive oil – or a couple of very hearty glugs

Sea salt

A squeeze of lemon

1 cup (½ pint) of plain, Greek yoghurt

Optional: A couple of handfuls of stale, white bread, torn up, with crusts removed

Method

I have deliberately kept the amounts quite loose, as this is where feel and taste rule. Coarsely chop the cucumbers – peel them first if you think the skin looks a bit tough – and put them in a blender. Add the crushed garlic, a pinch of sea salt, the olive oil, a squeeze of lemon, the yoghurt and the stale bread (if using) and puree to a wet pulp. You may have to do this in batches depending on the size of your blender.

Take the smoothness as far as you like – silk soup is very pleasing, some like a rougher texture, but I would strain the mixture through a sieve if you’re using the bread. Cover the bowl and chill thoroughly. Go almost to icicles. To serve, season the soup again. Remember that chilling dulls the flavour. Add a streak of yoghurt and strew with the herbs. Drop in some herb-flecked ice cubes for some shock and awe.

About Cucumbers

Originating in the Himalayan foothills, the wild cucumber is hideously bitter by nature. It has taken centuries of breeding to make it edible. It is a member of the Cucurbit family, to which the melon and winter and summer squash also belongs. It is a fruit.