Unusual Ingredient of the Week - Salsa Truffina

Salsa Truffina is a heady sauce from Italy made from local mushrooms, truffles and olive oil. Texture wise, it resembles a bronze coloured pesto and has an earthy, sensual fragrance that is delicately translated when added to pasta or combined with, for example, spinach (as the recipe prepared by myself, below).
For those who have had the opportunity to smell fresh Truffle (see article about my truffle-hunting dog), it is an unforgettable scent that is primitively evocative. Indeed, it was a brave man who tried many things for the first time, not least of all, the grubby, nubbly truffle, which is nothing to look at, and in truth, probably smells quite repulsive to some people. However, he (or she) was rewarded with a gift from nature that is worth perhaps more than an emerald or ruby, assuming, of course, that he (or she) had impeccable culinary tastes.
It is almost impossible to fully describe the taste of a truffle, but it lends an indelibly savoury, muskiness to any dish that it is added to, whether as a grated flourish on top of risotto or, for the poorer man, some Salsa Truffina stirred into pasta.
I recently purchased a small glass jar of Salsa Truffina (literally, Truffle Sauce) from the exotic section of delicacies in Sainsbury’s but it is also available to buy online or from your local specialist food shop. I had wanted to try a recipe that I read about in Tessa Kiro’s Falling Cloudberries (which is a wonderful collection of recipes gathered from Sweden, Italy, Greece and South Africa. It is far more coherent and eclectic than her latest book, Apples for Jam, which looks lovely but is perhaps a bit too twee and simplified for some tastes), Spinach and Truffle Triangles, hence the purchase and before trying the sauce I did wonder if perhaps I had purchased an ingredient that was a touch too recherché to be ever used again. Not to mention it was £4.59, which is quite expensive, even if it is a truffle-based product in a perfectly darling little glass jar with lots of gold on it.
However, after devoting some time lovingly making the rough puff pastry (although, in fact, I actually knocked it up in my lunch-hour after walking my dogs and having lunch itself, and it still turned out delicious despite being rushed), which is really the only complicated part of the whole procedure I thought to myself: there’s no turning back now. After work, I started to prep dinner, which was a mushroom risotto (from Delia’s Winter Collection), so whilst the onions and mushrooms were sweating down, I started to roll out the pastry for the Truffle Pasties. I have detailed the full procedure below but if I can make rough puff pastry in 10 minutes flat, then so can anyone. I must confess that as I started the recipe, I thought the pastry was going to be a bog-standard shortcrust but as I went on, the folding and turning of the butter into the flour made me realise that I was already part way through making something a bit different that I had never made before and that yes, I had made the rash decision to prepare in my lunch-hour.
Anyway, the filling of these delectable morsels comprised of finely chopped spinach mixed with a tablespoon of the truffle sauce, some truffle oil and some diced Mozzarella. The pastry is cut into squares, filled with the mixture, folded into a triangle, brushed with egg and baked for about 10 minutes. It is incredibly hard to resist biting into one once removed from the oven but if you wait, the flavours develop and then pop! in your mouth. Furthermore, if you are worried about using up the rest of your Salsa Truffina, I could suggest using it with pasta,
Spinach and Truffle Triangles
Ingredients:
Pastry:
225g Plain Flour, sifted
225g Butter, chilled and cut into dice
Pinch Salt
Iced Water
Filling:
300g Fresh Spinach (cooked in boiling, salted water for five minutes, drained well, half chopped finely, half left as is)
1 Tablespoon Salsa Truffina
1 Teaspoon Truffle Oil
100g Finely Chopped Mozzarella
Salt and Pepper
1 Egg, beaten
METHOD
To make the pastry, sieve the flour into a large mixing bowl with the salt. Add the chilled, diced butter and stir through the flour with a knife until coated. Add enough of the iced water to bring the mixture together. Wodge together as well as you can an turn out onto a cold surface. Form a rough cube and flouring your board, hands, rolling pin and pastry well, roll out into a rectangle, then fold the two longest ends inwards and then in half. Repeat. The pastry is very sticky because the butter is not worked into the flour in the traditional manner (i.e. rubbing with your fingers). Roll into a thick rectangle, maybe 6 inches by 4 inches, wrap in cling-film and refrigerate for at least half an hour (preferably longer).
Preheat your oven to 180c.
To make the filling, mix the finely chopped spinach into the pearly white cubes of Mozzarella, add the Salsa Truffina, Truffle Oil, the rest of the spinach and season well.
Remove the pastry from the fridge. Once again flour your work surface, hands and rolling pin. Roll the rested pastry out until it is about 30cm x 30cm or thereabouts. I had to do mine in two lots, as my work surface is tiny!
The pastry should be very thin, maybe 1mm thick. Cut into squares 4” x 4” and place each square onto a baking tray. Put a tablespoon of mixture in the centre of each square and fold over the pastry over to form a triangle. Press down the edges firmly to seal and brush with egg yolk. This should make about 16 pastries, but I only ended up making 13 because of space limitations and also because the remaining pastry stuck to the board under the warmth of the lights. It is always the first rule of pastry making to keep things cold, cold, cold! Perhaps this is why pies are best in the wintertime?
Anyway, brush each of your fat, stuffed little triangles with beaten egg and place in the oven for 10-15 minutes or until golden brown and puffy but firm. Leave to cool for about 5 minutes (or as long as you can bear – remember they are filled with molten Mozzarella at this point!!). Eat them and weep.

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Unusual Ingredient of the Week - Herring Roe

And so, as promised, I tried an interesting variety meat this weekend. In truth you can only just call it meat as in fact it is sild – Herring Sild – also known as Herring Roes.
When you see the roe on display at your local fish counter, it doesn’t look like much at all. A sort of greyish, pinkish sludge in a bowl shoved to one side, the Red Snappers and Lemon Soles demanding the attention of the unsuspecting shopper. Don’t be fooled through by its unassuming demeanour. For about 59p you can get 250g of Herring Roe, which is ample for two hungry (and poor) people. Once you get home with your little bag of the pinkish mush, you will see that they are not slimy or squishy at all. In fact, they are long, plumpish, well defined curls of roe. For those of you not in the know, the roe you buy at the fish counter is not female in origin. That would be hard roe and would be packed with eggs. We are talking about soft roe, which is, basically the sperm of the male Herring, still encased inside the testis. Still with me? Remember back to when I discussed offal and how you just have to overcome your squeamishness? This is maybe another one of those instances. Trust me though. It’s not like eating bull’s testicles, there’s no close your eyes and think of England ingestion of these Danish delicacies.
Apparently, according to my grandmother who I suppose should know, Soft Roes are an old fashioned food, cheap and considered poor people’s food. More fool them because in regardless of its cheapness, Roe is a tasty, quick snack that is also nutritious. In their uncooked state, they have a delicate smell of the sea, not at all brash. To prepare them, carefully remove the black vein that runs along the sacs, and then dredge the plump little things in seasoned flour. Heat some butter in a pan and once bubbling, gently put the floured roe in, cooking for about 2-3 minutes on each side. As they cook, they curl up like big prawns and they become firm. As they fizzle and brown in the pan, season them with some black pepper and paprika if you wish. Serve on hot, buttered toast.
Another recipe for serving the roe, which I find delicious, is from Tamasin’s Kitchen Classics, and for that you prepare a shallot, caper and butter spread for the toast. It is so simple but the flavours of the shallot and salty capers really enhance the North Sea memory of the roes. Completely delicious.
Soft Herring Roe served with Caper and Shallot Butter
Ingredients:
250g Herring Roe, gently deveined
Some plain white Flour
Salt and Pepper
Small Shallot, very finely chopped
Teaspoon Capers, rinsed (the ones in salt are the best)
Lemon Juice
Bread for Toasting (about 4 thick slices)
30g Butter for frying
40g Butter for the Bread
METHOD
Put a handful of flour into a food bag and season with salt and pepper. Gently toss the Roe in the flour and then spread them out on a plate to avoid the flour from clogging up.
Melt the butter in a frying pan. Once sizzling, add the Roe, grind over some black pepper and cook on each side until golden brown and firm.
Meanwhile, make the Butter. Soften the butter with a fork in a small bowl, add the capers, shallots, spritz of fresh lemon juice and seasoning to taste.
Toast your bread. Once hot and browned to your own personal specification, slather with the Shallot/Caper Butter. Pop the browned roes on top of the fragrant, melting butter. Enjoy!

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Offal

It seems that I may just be on the precipice, balancing perilously between good taste and Good Taste. What’s the difference, I hear you ask? Well, probably about 30 years of food conditioning for a start. What on earth are you actually talking about, I further hear you cry? In one shuddering word, guaranteed to send people fleeing for cover: Offal.
Offal seems to evoke a love it or hate it response. Those that remember brawn being cooked up when they were kids, or pigs feet being used to enrich stews, have fond memories of it (even my mother has affectionate memories of gnawing on a pigs trotter when she was a toddler. Not that she would touch them with a barge pole now). Everyone else was probably born some time after the end of the 1950s.
What is sad about this decline in popularity is the disappearance of more unusual cuts of meat from the supermarkets. To order a trotter or oxtail takes some canny planning – you need to inform your butcher about a week in advance to make sure you have your exotic meat in time for cooking. This wasn’t always the case, of course. In more frugal times, everything but the squeak, moo, cock-a-doodle or baa was used and even the animal’s natural clothing was put to good use. Our parents, grandparents and ancestors beyond knew that the best flavour lay outside of the flesh. After all, why do we, even now, put kidney in a Steak and Kidney Pie, yet the kidneys are not readily eaten as the main meat on a plate?

This leads to another question. Why have we become squeamish about eating foods with names like "Head Cheese" and yet we'll devour Black Pudding, which is, essentially, blood sausage? Why is eating one part of an animal delicious, whilst another part is considered horrific? I think as a whole, we have become uneducated about our food. We are brought up being served roast dinners and hamburgers and sausages and steaks and chops. We know that this is just the flesh of the beast. We don’t know for sure what’s in burgers and sausages but we hope that it’s 100% pure meat. Even so, if it disguised so that it looks palatable, we will enjoy it. Offal is impossible to disguise, save for grinding it up and stuffing it into a skin or shaping it into a patty or smothering it in sauce. Tripe looks pretty unappetising with its honeycomb texture; Sweetbreads look like glands; Haggis does resemble a grass stuffed sheep’s stomach; Trotters look like dainty pig’s feet; Tongue does resemble a big old slab of, well, tongue. As for brains....if you have a particularly lurid imagination all these things remind us of our own body. How many of us have seen the Night of the Living Dead where the zombies begin devouring the body of the couple burned alive in the truck? We see them tucking into entrails with gusto, biting into their victim’s hearts with relish. They know that the sweet, sweet offal will keep them (sort of) alive.
The organ meats, as they are unpleasantly referred to, are jam-packed with vitamins and minerals. Liver is particularly high in Iron (although gout sufferers (who, ironically, are often liver-lovers) can’t touch the stuff because of its high purine levels).

Of course, I’m not suggesting that we should turn into cannibalistic zombies. However, what the zombies were exercising (or exorcising) in the movie was their primordial instincts of survival, to eat whatever food was available and this is exactly how we have survived for so many years.
Sadly, not all of us enjoy eating meat on the bone anymore or chewing on entrails. We prefer our meat to come in nice square chunks that don’t really taste of anything because of preservatives and short life spans. I think it’s time for a change. The tide is turning and people are demanding a better variety of organic meat. The supermarkets all have organic meat ranges, many are now supplying veal and game which was previously very hard to get hold of. Chicken Liver Pate and Sliced Calves Liver never seems to leave restaurant menus, but brains in black butter sauce seems to be a relic from the days of fine dining. I recently read in Gourmet Magazine about a restaurant in the US that had marrow on the menu. And by marrow I mean the essence of what sustains us, not a large courgette. The prepared bones are served, vertically, with long and narrow spoons, made just for scooping marrow out, to be served on toast. Other places serve pigs face, served as part of a Misto Bolito. Some people, like my Great Grandfather, relish eating the Parsons Nose at Christmastime.
Perhaps if you’re wary of trying a variety meat (as the Americans euphemistically refer to them), think of it this way: If you’re prepared to risk a wholly unpleasant experience by eating the hottest curry in a restaurant, eating unusual meat will probably be a lot more rewarding and surprising. Prepared in the right way, it can taste as good or a lot better than a cheap cut of intensively farmed steak, which is flavourless and watery. And if you’ll eat the kidney element of a steak and kidney pudding or pie, then what’s to stop you there? Oxtail is a good old-fashioned cut to ease you into the idea of offal. It is a rich, gelatinous meat with bags of flavour (which must come from the all the exercise of flicking away flies) and is so much better in a stew than just plain old stewing beef. Or how about granny’s favourite, tripe? This used to be recommended to people with delicate stomachs, which immediately suggests that it must be delicate meat. These days it is served in spicy, tomato rich sauces rather than the milk it used to be poached in. Try splitting a trotter and putting it in homemade chicken stock or soup for a richer, thicker finished dish.
A little bit of bravery is all that is required, and leaving your squeamishness at the front door. This weekend I’ll be facing my own personal fears in true gourmand style: I will be buying some chicken livers and cod’s roe to try. I will keep you posted.

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Quince Cake

Nostradamus: “(the colour of a Quince) is so diaphanous that it resembles an oriental ruby”
I have a great love and admiration for the ethereal Quince. It is like love, fleeting and impossible to describe. With it’s exotically perfumed scent, reminiscent of the South Seas, it is not hard to see why it is considered the fruit of love. In Ancient Greece, a virgin bride would delicately nibble a Quince to ‘perfume her breath’ on her wedding night. Paris presented Aphrodite with a Quince as a symbol of love, marriage and fertility, little wonder when you consider the bottom heavy, fertile shape of the fruit.
But the Apple of Gold was not just used for love. During the Quince-Baldarian War, fought in Biblical times, the fruit was filled with stones and lit on fire – a sort of modern day hand grenade. The Baldarian soldiers were finally defeated, after attempting to take over Quince land (owned by King Georgio Quince) and legend has it that the Quince fruit was named after the King and became forever a symbol of strength and intelligence within that noble family. The word Quince is also derived from the Greek, Kydonian Malon, meaning Apple of Gold, so it can be considered the fruit with the most interesting and puzzling past, truly a legendary fruit.
I encountered Quinces first hand last winter after reading so many delightful recipes and stories about them. They were for sale in a local supermarket, outrageously priced and imported from Central Asia (they are the fruit of the Cydonia Oblonga) and warm Mediterranean countries where they are much revered. Regretfully, I didn’t actually cook with them but made Quince Brandy (or Eau De Vie De Coings) with them, mostly because they had started to turn brown. I didn’t want to use up the precious Quinces that only appeared on the shelves for about a fortnight each year.
Along with the Fig, the Quince is one of the oldest fruits in the world and it has been suggested that the sinful apple that Eve tempted Adam with in the Garden of Eden was in fact a Quince, although how they quite managed to consume it raw (hard and unyielding as they are, they require the use of a meat cleaver and a pair of hod carriers arms to cut them into usable chunks). They certainly have a seductive shape, almost egg shaped, but smooth and firm, like the medieval Madonna’s bosoms in paintings from the Middle Ages.
Apples and pears are related to the Quince, though it is more likely that they have evolved from the Quince. In fact, the texture of a poached Quince, with its slightly grainy feel on the teeth, is similar to that of a Pear. It was the Quince that was originally made into what developed into modern day marmalade: Marmalada, which is derived from the Greek word for preserved Quince, Melimelon. It has an outstandingly high pectin content, hence the production of Membrillo, or Quince Cheese, which is a very firm, almost chewy preserve that is cooked for a couple of hours, then traditionally laid out in the warm sun to dry out. It is then cut into squares and served with savouries or as a sweet pastille, tossed in sugar.
Quinces have a heady apple-like scent, but much more complex, with undertones of apricots and exotic fruits like mango and pineapple are suggested, particularly during cooking process.
There are so few Quince trees left in England that actually fruit and are not just ornamental, that to be given some from a windfall is a real gift. They were first noted in English records dating back to the 13th Century when they would have been brought over from Spain but due to the cold weather in Britain, they only fruit when the weather is particularly tropical. This week I was given five beautiful specimens, all from an English country garden, and each weighing nearly a pound each. To smell them, freshly picked, is like breathing in the aroma of a letter that was once perfumed, just a memory of a scent but as they warm up in your fruit bowl, they start to fragrance the whole house.
Quinces are used widely in the Middle East, where they grow freely (and where most of the Quinces that we see in the supermarkets are imported from), in savoury dishes, in much the same way as say, squash or pumpkin, but with a much more mysterious flavour. They hold their shape well in slow cooked dishes and are particularly delectable with lamb.
Because of their size, several Quinces can go quite a long way. I recently prepared some Membrillo (Quince Cheese) using two fruits that had started to go brown and I used just one Quince to add a haunting whisper to a cake.

My Quince Cake recipe is my first fully hatched recipe. By which I mean, an original recipe (Torta Di Mele by Anna Del Conte) that I have taken and reshaped. I haven’t actually tried the original but when the Quince season passes fragrantly by, I will experiment using apple.
This is a really unusual cake in that it uses Olive Oil for its fat content, instead of the usual butter or (gasp!) margarine. Not only does this save on arm power when beating the sugar and fat together, but it makes the texture of the cake very light and moist and a bit crumby.
The Quince is the only awkward bit of the preparation but the whole thing still only took about half an hour or so to get oven-ready, and that was working around my husband who was cooking supper. There are two ways you could choose to do the quince:
1) Cut top and tail off the quince, do not peel. Halve and then cut thin slices off the quince, until you reach the hard core. Do this with both halves. Add 100ml water and 1 teaspoon caster sugar to a pan, add the sliced Quince and bring to the boil. Turn down, put the lid on and simmer until the Quince is tender (about 5-10 minutes, contrary to popular belief, if Quince is sliced thinly, it will soften in no time). I added a small sprinkling of sultanas to the poaching Quince. Once the Quince is poached, scoop out the peach coloured slithers, drain and pass through a mouli-legumes. This will ensure a smooth puree. The skin can be quite tough but the best flavour, scent and colour is there so this way you waste nothing. The puree is then added to the cake batter, along with the strained sultanas.
2) Peel the quince first, proceed as above but do not puree. Instead cut the slithers into 1cm pieces so that the cake will be dotted with the ochre tinted fruit.
Whichever method you find suits you the best, here is the recipe for the rest of the cake:
QUINCE CAKE:
Ingredients:
1 large Quince to give approximately 300g poached fruit
20g sultanas
1 teaspoon caster sugar for poaching the fruit
150ml Olive Oil
200g Sugar (I used 100g caster sugar and 100g unrefined caster sugar, which has a caramel flavour)
2 organic eggs
350g Plain Flour
1 teaspoon Cinnamon
1 ½ teaspoon Bicarbonate of Soda
½ teaspoon Sea Salt
Grated Rind of Organic Lemon
100g Ground Almonds
Demerara Sugar
METHOD:
Line and grease an 8” Cake tin with a loose bottom. I used Bakers Joy, which is butter and flour in a can, and no greaseproof paper and the cake didn’t stick at all, but unfortunately we can’t get Bakers Joy here yet (I imported some from my last trip to the US).
Preheat the oven to 180c.
Prepare the Quince as above, using either method 1 or 2.
Whilst the Quince is poaching, beat together the 200g sugar with the olive oil until it is thoroughly amalgamated. It should like a very pale olive colour. This is, of course, due to the olive oil. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, until the mixture has increased in volume and looks like thin mayonnaise.
Sieve the flour, bicarbonate of soda, sea salt and cinnamon and fold gradually into the oil and sugar mixture, using a metal spoon. At this point, the mixture will be very stiff.
Stir in the Quince and sultanas, then the ground almonds and lemon zest. Again, the mixture will be stiff and have to be spooned into the cake tin. Sprinkle with some Demerara Sugar and bake for about an hour, but check after 45 minutes. A skewer should come out clean.
Leave to cool and serve in slices with some softly whipped cream.

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Chickpea and Courgette Filo Pie

Another pie, which demands to be shared, thereby bringing my postings on Pies up to three in about a week, is one that I made for supper last night, Chickpea and Courgette Filo Pie. I originally read about this recipe in Nigella Lawson’s How to be a Domestic Goddess, which is a great baking book, filled with many inspirational ideas that hopefully will remain in recipe lexiconography for years to come. The great thing about many of these recipes is that you don’t need to have the book out the countertop with you to guide you along. Once you’ve cooked a dish a couple of times, their simplicity allows you to make them freely and easily, changing the spices around, tweaking here and there. This is a good thing in a cookbook, not least of all because I’m always misplacing my books, under the bed, under the settee, under the greyhound...
Anyway, the following recipe is one of those simplistic dishes, a quickly prepared meal that can be prepped and on the table within about an hour. And that’s not at all bad for something that uses Filo Pastry. Also great if you need to cook a vegetarian meal because the ingredients are so substantial, I doubt even a die-hard carnivore would refuse seconds.
This is a warming, wintery dish that is all about soft textures: the gentle nutty chickpeas, the crumbly rice and the tender courgettes, all swathed in their golden spices. My husband thinks that this would be good with some undyed, creamy smoked haddock flaked into it and raw egg stirred through, before incasing in pastry - it would then be, I suppose, a Kedgeree Filo Pie - a recipe that demands to be cooked. Watch this space.
Chickpea and Courgette Filo Pie
Ingredients:
Pack Filo Pastry, defrosted
1 Medium Onion, finely chopped
1 Clove Garlic, finely chopped
2 Large Courgettes (Zucchini), topped and tailed,

and cut into 1cm chunks or thereabouts
1 Tin Chick Peas, drained
100g Basmati Rice
200ml Vegetable Stock
1 teaspoon Tumeric
1 teaspoon Ground Coriander
1 Teaspoon Sea Salt
Grind Black Pepper

METHOD:
Preheat oven to 180c
Lightly oil an 8” Loose Bottomed Deep Cake Tin (at least 6” deep).
Sautee the onion and garlic in a little Olive Oil until softly translucent.
Add a couple of tablespoons more of Olive Oil and stir in the chopped Courgette. Add the Tumeric, Coriander, Salt and Pepper. Cook over a low heat until the Courgette is tender and yielding to a knifepoint.
Stir in the Rice, coat well until glistening, then add 150ml of the stock. Stir once. Leave to cook over a low simmer, until the rice is just cooked. Depending on the brand of rice, you may need to add more of the stock.
Stir in the chickpeas and heat gently. Taste for seasoning. You may need more salt.
Remove from the heat and allow to cool for a couple of minutes whilst you fiddle around with the Filo Pastry.
Melt 50g butter over low heat. This will work as your glue for the Filo Pastry, and also ensure that you get a crisp finish and not a chewy, floury calamity.
Working with once piece of Filo at a time, using a large pastry brush, brush one side of the pastry with the melted butter. Lay it in the tin, butter side up (because you have already greased the tin), so that it should cover part of the bottom of the tin and overlap the edge of the tin too. This overlap will later be folded in to make the top of the pie.
Repeat with the other pieces of the pastry until you have worked your way around the tin, ensuring that there are no gaps or tears, particularly in the bottom.
n.b. You will find, as I did, that working with Filo Pastry is not very scary at all. It is a bit like working with a delicate fabric or ancient sea scroll, except that if you tear the pastry it doesn’t really matter because you can always put another layer over the top.
Once you have lined your tin with the pastry, pour in the slightly cooled Chickpea and courgette mixture. Pat down to level it off and fold in the layers of filo pastry to form a top seal. Brush with any remaining butter. To make it look pretty (and because I like the pull the pieces of the top), brush 4 or 5 more pieces of the Filo with butter, crumple gently into rosette shapes and place in a circular pattern on the top of the pie (see photo). These aren’t really necessary but they do taste good. Brush with butter and place in oven for half an hour (but check after 20 minutes because Filo has a tendency to burn quickly due to its diaphanous thinness.
Once cooked, remove from the oven but leave to cool in the tin for 5 minutes. Carefully remove from the tin and place on a serving plate. You may want to leave to cool for a bit longer as it has a tendency to collapse if you cut it when it’s still too hot but no matter. It still tastes great no matter on how it’s presented.

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Juusto - Unusual Ingredient of the Week

And because I love unusual foods so much, here is an erstwhile series devoted to just that: unusual foods. Let me elaborate. Unusual doesn’t necessarily mean Fugu or horseshoe crab but items that are alien to me, a sheltered Brit girl who comes from a tiny village in Essex that thinks that figs are exotic (well, actually they are in their own seductive way).

Today, Juusto, a type of cheese from Finland, which is unusual, not because it tastes and smells like rotting fruit or is aged for seven years in a crypt, but because it is literally a bread cheese. What this means is that Juusto is not a cheese you put between two slices of bread but that you use as the bread. And the filling.
We bought a pack when we visited Wisconsin, the Dairy State. Wisconsin has a great selection of locally made cheeses that replicate continental cheeses (there’s not much point in importing cheese into a dairy state, after all), but this is the most unusual looking of all cheeses (excluding perhaps the ones that are aged in straw or ash). Once removed from it’s shrinkwrap, Juusto resembles a large slap of fried Halloumi but it also resembles a piece of toast. The reason for this is that the cheese is already toasted.
According to the website (at Pasture Pride Cheese, WI), Juusto has been produced in Finland, Sweden and Lapland for over 2 centuries. It is baked, which gives it its distinctive toasted appearance, which is how it greets us on the shelves. Taste wise, again it is similar to Halloumi but without the saltiness. It is squeaky against the teeth but not in an unpleasant way. Recipes on the official website suggest serving it savoury or sweet. They also produce a Jalapeno variety. It doesn’t melt, so you can microwave it, as we did, and serve it drizzled with butter and honey or jam. As my husband said “Cheese spread with Butter. Could there be anything more calorifically good?”
I also love that fact that it is an artisanal, local cheese, produced literally just up the road from where my husband’s parents live, and that Pasture Pride Cheese are also producing other cheesy delicacies such as Muenster, Colby, Pepper Jack and a variety of Cheddars.
Fans of strong tasting French cheeses might find it a bit bland but I loved it, and not just for the novelty value. It actually felt like a snack I would prepare on a dangerously regular basis if only we could purchase it here!

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The Fine Art of Not Garnishing

I have a work colleague who recently had to take the afternoon off work to prepare for a dinner party (for six people). Whilst I think having a dinner party in the middle of the week is tantamount to deliberately treading on ball bearings that have been stored in grease, why should work dictate our private lives?

Her menu seemed simple enough:

Starter: Spring Rolls and Prawn Toast

Main: Chicken in a Honey/Lemon Marinade with 6 (6!!) different vegetables

Dessert: Homemade Apple Pie

To me, this menu didn’t really warrant an afternoon off work, bearing in mind that the starter was shop bought, marinated chicken is made several hours in advance and apple pie can be made the day beforehand. However. What I had forgotten was that my work colleague is a little bit insane. She insisted on garnishing the first two courses to within an inch of their lives: she painstakingly produced raw carrot baskets that each took her 10 minutes to prepare. So, 10 minutes each, four on a plate, 6 diners...that’s 240 minutes spent making a pointless garnish! But that’s not all. The main course, which at first glance seems simple, was garnished with, well, the vegetables. She cooked broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, carrots (yes, more carrots!), roast potatoes and Brussels sprouts, which were then reformed into a sort of vegetable brain montage in the centre of the table, resembling something from the Gallery of Regrettable Food (www.lileks.com).

She didn’t go so far as to describe the architectural pastry monument she prepared for dessert but my mind can only boggle endlessly at the permutations that could be open to someone so artistically minded.

The sad thing is, the food probably would have all tasted perfectly delicious had the rubix cube carrots been discarded and replaced with a simple bowl of dipping sauce on each plate instead. After all, simplicity is the key to most Asian cookery. And as for the vegetable display, who would have complained at warming bowls with each vegetable served individually?

People spend too much time worrying about making food look appetising. I remember eating at a local gourmet pub in the late 90s and every single course - from the Prawn Cocktail starter through to Tempura finishing up with Vanilla Ice cream – was garnished with a large sprig of redcurrants. Don’t get me wrong. Redcurrants are one of the fruit world’s most beautiful gifts and in the right place (a jelly or summer pudding perhaps) they are delicious. But to serve them with Prawn Cocktail, where raw redcurrants have no place or with a Deep Fried Oriental Dish, where redcurrants absolutely have no place whatsoever, is just pointless and wasteful. I can just about allow the garnish with vanilla ice cream as they did look very pretty. But I still didn’t eat them. Most garnishes end up pushed to the sides of the plate.

I’m not sure if it’s an old school mentality but my mother also insists on garnishing my creamy, pale risottos with quartered tomatoes when only a sprinkling of torn parsley is necessary. Anything pale-coloured (or ‘insipid’ as she calls it) is automatically made more ‘colourful’ and ‘appetising’ with a wedge of raw tomato. I suppose I can blame Fannie Craddock. She garnished everything to within an inch of their lives too. In the 70s and 80s, food was decorated with mint leaves, dustings of icing sugar/cocoa powder, tomatoes, lemons. But we don’t live in those days any longer. Food just has to be good to please, not pretty.

As for me, well, I’m going to stick to a sprinkling of chopped herbs if necessary and if not, well then, things go to the table plain but tasty. And that’s what matters.

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A French Meal

Gigot a la Cuillere is lamb that is roasted slowly in a low oven for seven hours, the meat becoming so tender that it can be cut with a spoon. It is a rich, special dish that proves to me that there is more to lamb than curry and poorly roasted cuts. The meat tastes like a stronger, moister rib of beef but any fattiness that normally pervades lamb is cooked away. The meat is surrounded by carrots, garlic, onions and leeks, all of which helps add extra flavour to not only the meat but also to the gravy that the slow cooking produces.
Cooking something for seven hours is a romantic notion, but would work amazingly well with any cut of meat, the low temperatures breaking down the fibrous flesh to produce a creamy meat.
Gigot a la Cuillere would be a fabulous dinner party dish because you put the meat in the oven at lunchtime and by the time your guests arrive, some seven hours later, you arrange the tender lamb and flavourful vegetables on a serving dish, strain the cooking juices, boil them rapidly to make a rich gravy and, short of making an additional side dish of perhaps Petits Pois prepared Parisian style or Potatoes Dauphinoise, everything is else is worry free.

Gigot a la Cuillere
Ingredients services 2 (to serve 4-6, double the ingredients, including the size of the lamb)
Half Leg Lamb (about 1.5kg)
2 Large onions, sliced
4 Garlic Cloves, peeled but left whole
2 Carrots, quartered longwise
200ml White Wine
200ml Stock (chicken preferably but I used vegetable stock cubes in this instance)
Seasoning

METHOD:
Preheat oven to 120c.
Season the lamb very well.
Brown the lamb on all sides in a very hot frying pan, or if your baking dish is ovenproof, use this on the hotplate. The meat does not brown during the cooking process so it is important to caramelise it at this stage for colour and also this adds lots of flavour to the final dish.
Once brown, place the lamb in baking dish (if you used the frying pan method for browning) and add all the chopped vegetables, stock and white wine. Season again and bring to the boil on the hotplate. Once boiling, cover with the lid or tinfoil and place in the oven for 5-7 hours (a smaller leg will require less cooking time).
After this time, the meat will be falling from the bone and all that you are required to do is arrange it, rustically, on a plate with the surrounding vegetables.
N.B. The lamb will be fine to rest for an hour if you make the Potatoes Dauphinoise, which are cooked at a higher heat than the lamb. Just make sure to keep it well wrapped in the foil, still in the baking tin.
To make the gravy, strain the cooking liquor into a saucepan and boil rapidly. Add a splash of brandy to enrich if you like. Check for seasoning once the gravy has reduced. It may need pepper but probably not salt.


Potatoes Dauphinoise:
Ingredients:
1kg Potatoes, peeled and sliced to the thickness of a one pound coin (about 3mm)
130ml Double Cream
130ml Full Fat Milk
1 Clove Garlic, peeled and halved
Seasoning
Nutmeg
Sprig of Thyme
25g Parmesan Cheese, grated (optional)

METHOD:
Preheat Oven to 150c
Layer half of the sliced potatoes into a lined and buttered brownie tin (about 10” x 10”). Season each layer.
Heat the milk, cream, garlic and Thyme in a saucepan and slowly bring to the boil. Remove from heat and let steep for a few minutes for the flavours to infuse.
Strain the milk/cream mixture into a jug, grate over some nutmeg.
Pour half of the mixture over the potatoes. Repeat with the remaining half of potatoes and sauce, season once more and sprinkle with Parmesan Cheese (optional).
Bake in the oven for an hour to an hour and a half, until a knifepoint pierces the potatoes easily.
Leave to stand for five minutes, cut into slices and serve.

Petits Pois Parisian Style (serves two)
Ingredients:
Enough frozen Petits Pois for two people
1 Little Gem Lettuce, shredded finely
1 Small onion, finely diced
Chicken/Vegetable Stock, 100ml (cubes will do)
Seasoning
Pinch Sugar
Olive Oil

METHOD:
Sauté the finely chopped onion in about a tablespoon of olive oil until softly translucent but not mushy. You want to lose the harsh crunch.
Stir the frozen peas into the onion and oil mixture, making sure that they are well coated. Pour over the stock and bring to a light simmer. Stir in the shredded lettuce, cook for a couple minutes more until wilted and the peas are cooked. The stock should have been mostly absorbed. Taste for seasoning and add a pinch of sugar to enhance the flavour of the sweet, baby peas.
Serve with anything from the Seven Hour Lamb to Mashed Potato and Fish Fingers!

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More Pies

So far in my experiments with pies, I have encased smoked haddock with watercress to great success, made a Grasshopper Pie with disastrous results, baked the dreamiest Coconut Cream Pie and had mixed feelings about a Butternut Squash and Crottin Tart. I have also made what my work colleague refers to as a cheat’s apple pie but in fact it was made in the American tradition, that is to say, without a bottom crust.
I find pies to be the perfect thing to take to friends for lunch, or to pack up for a picnic or a long car journey. The pastry also doubles up as a napkin of sorts, not letting the filling spill all over you or your car during consumption/transportation.
I am particularly fond of dessert pies. There is nothing prettier or more satisfying than a slice of fruit pie, the pastry crisp, flaky and buttery with a sugary crust and then the biting through to the succulent tart fruit, spilling juices down your chin. The Americans have a wonderfully large range of pie cases filled with sweet creams and spiced pumpkin or sweet potatoes. I could eat them all.
Pies are so substantial, even if your filling is as light as air, the crust will ensure that you feel completely satisfied after the main course, particularly if you blanket your pie in custard, cream or a la mode (with vanilla ice cream). And if you partake in the Apple Pie with the Cheddar Cheese crust, you have the dessert and cheese board in one.
My major pie disaster, the Grasshopper Pie was down to my own lack of pre-baking store cupboard checking. A Grasshopper Pie is a deliciously refreshing pie, that tastes as retro as it looks. It is set into a dense mousse-like texture using gelatine, but, after blending fresh mint with sugar syrup, I discovered that the packet that I thought was gelatine was in fact a turkey-roasting bag. Sadly, you can’t thicken pie filling with roasting bags, so I tried to improvise by using Cornflour mixed with water (as it had worked to well the Coconut Cream Pie). I dubiously poured the mint scented, pistachio coloured filling into the crust and quickly put it into the fridge, then crossed my fingers. The next morning, I cautiously peered into the fridge, and gently jiggled the pie. It had a slight wobble but seemed quite sturdy. I was jubilant that my quick thinking had saved the day. However, my joy was short lived when, as I went to cut the pie, it seemed the filling had formed a sort of skin, which concealed another layer of runny filling. We gamely tried the pie though and the flavour was delicious: cool and palate cleansing, sort of like melted mint choc-chip ice cream. Unfortunately, it was hard to get past that melted ice cream texture (not to mention cutting slices was a virtual impossibility) and it was declared a partial success.
And with that cautionary tale, here then, are several of my favourite pie recipes, savoury and sweet, none of which are complex to make but taste sensational and are good enough to serve as either a quick supper or for a dinner party.

Coconut Cream Pie
Make an 8” Pie Crust, with an all butter crust or a combination of butter/lard. Bake blind for about 15 minutes at 200c. Remove the beans and press down the crust to stop it bubbling up. Return to the over for 5-10 minutes until crisp and golden brown. Leave to cool.
Ingredients:
¾ Cup Caster Sugar
¼ Cup Cornflour
¼ Teaspoon Salt
2 Cups Milk
3 Organic Egg Yolks
2 Tablespoons Butter
1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1 Cup Flaked Coconut (not dessicated)
METHOD:
Combine ¾ Cup Sugar, Cornstarch, salt and milk in heavy saucepan. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring constantly until thick and bubbly. Continue to boil for one minute. Remove from heat.
In a medium bowl, beat the egg yolks. Gradually stir in ¼ of the hot mixture into the yolks. Pour yolks back into the remaining hot mixture, stirring constantly for 30 seconds. Remove from heat; add butter, vanilla and coconut. Pour into cooked the piecrust. Leave to cool, then cool further in the fridge.
Now, there are two ways of serving the pie. One way is my favourite way, to thickly whip some double cream, slightly sweetened with icing sugar (which also stabilises the cream) and slather over the cold coconut pie. Sprinkle with toasted coconut if you feel artistic. The second way is to make a Meringue topping: Beat 3 egg whites (reserved from the yolks) until frothy. Slowly add 6 tablespoons of caster sugar while continuing to beat until the meringue forms stiff white, shiny, snowy peaks. Spread over the coconut pie, sprinkle with coconut (optional) and brown in the oven or under a hot grill.

Mashed Potato, Stilton and Golden Onion Pie (Nigel Slater)
Even more tenuously a pie than our beloved Shepherds Pie, this is comfort food at it’s most appealing: mashed potato, meltingly strong cheese and sweet, sticky onions, all in one dish. No plate required.
Ingredients (serves 2)
800g Potatoes, peeled, quartered and cooked in boiling water ‘til tender
150g (depending on your love of the cheese) Blue Cheese: Gorgonzola, Danish Blue, Stilton, whatever you have
4 Large Onions, peeled, halved and sliced into thin crescents.
Olive Oil
40g Butter plus extra for mashing the spuds and some for greasing the baking dish
Seasoning
40g Parmesan, grated
Some milk (preferably full fat, even cream if you’re feeling decadent and/or depressed)
METHOD:
Preheat Oven to 200c
Melt the 40g butter plus a slosh of olive oil (to stop the butter burning) in a large frying pan; add the onions and season with black pepper. Cover and cook over a low heat for at least half an hour or until golden brown and unctuous.
Drain the cooked potatoes and mash with some butter, milk/cream and seasoning until it tastes exactly as you like it. Try not to make it to creamy though as it won’t hold up brilliantly in the oven.
Layer a lightly greased baking dish with half the mash, sprinkle over the bronzed onions and crumbled blue cheese. Cover with the rest of the mashed potato; throw over the Parmesan and dot with a little butter to encourage the top to brown deliciously. Cook for about 20-30 minutes, until bubbling and golden brown. Serve with nothing else but preferably someone you love.

Haddock and Watercress Tart (from the Art of the Tart by Tamasin Day-Lewis)
A lovely summery tasting dish that is just as good with a salad as it is with a baked potato. Leftovers taste great too.
Ingredients:
8inch Shortcrust Pastry Case
325g (preferably) undyed Haddock
300ml Milk
Bay Leaf
30g Butter
1 Small Onion, finely chopped
1 Stick Celery, finely chopped
30g Plain Flour
Seasoning
Bunch Watercress (preferably freshly picked but, like me, probably gotten from the supermarket), finely chopped
2 Eggs, beaten
2tbsp Grated Parmesan
METHOD:
Preheat Oven to 190c
Simmer the haddock in the milk, with the bay leaf, for about 10-15 minutes or until the flesh starts to flake away from the skin. Drain, reserving the milk. Flake the fish into a bowl and put to one side.
Heat the butter in a saucepan, add the onion and celery, cook slowly until the softened and translucent. Stir in the flour and cook for a couple minutes more. Add the reserved milk and stir until the sauce has thickened. Season with salt, pepper and a add grating of fresh nutmeg, if you have some. Remove from heat and stir in the fish, watercress and beaten eggs. Pour into the pastry case, sprinkle with the Parmesan and bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes or until puffy and golden.
As with all tarts and pies, leave to cool for about 5 minutes to allow the pastry to relax and to ensure the filling doesn’t burn any greedy eater’s mouths!

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Another Speedy Supper

Despite my constant complaints that I don’t have enough to time cook, paradoxically I like to cook fast meals that taste great. I have written about this at length on previous posts.
Last night I prepared a meal which was so eye-blinkingly quick to make, yet looked and tasted like I must have slaved over it for hours. Pan Fried Pork Medallions with a Gorgonzola Sauce was that dish. My husband discovered it in the latest issue of the Sainsbury’s magazine and suggested that it would be a good way to use up the pack of organic pork medallions that I had bought ages ago and that stared sadly up at me every time I opened the freezer door. And, for once, I didn’t have to buy any other ingredients. We are currently enjoying Gorgonzola as our favourite cheese so had half a chunk in the fridge, along with Creme Fraiche (which I always try to keep around because it keeps for ages and is indispensable) and rocket leaves for the accompanying salad. In short, dinner was ready within 30 minutes and would have been quicker but we spent a good five minutes photographing the dish to accompany this article.


Pan Fried Pork Medallions with Gorgonzola and Crème Fraiche Sauce
Ingredients:

To serve 2 hungry people:
6 Organic Pork Medallions (or cut a loin into 6 thick rings, after removing the fat)
40g Butter
100g Gorgonzola (or any blue cheese that you have laying around, you may need less if you are using Stilton because of it’s saltiness)
150g Creme Fraiche

Method:
Melt the butter in a frying pan. Cook the pork in the butter, over high heat, for about 3-5 minutes each side until cooked. Remove pork to a plate and keep warm whilst you make the sauce.
Pour the creme fraiche into the frying pan that you cooked the pork in, crumble the Gorgonzola in and melt slowly over a low heat. Stir in any pork juices that might have accumulated on the plate.
Arrange the medallions on a plate, pour over the sauce and grind over some black pepper.
Serve with a rocket salad or baked potato. Some quartered mushrooms thrown into the sauce or just cooked in some butter are also delicious served alongside.

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A Simple Yet Complex Greek Dish

Let me elaborate. I realise that something being simple yet complex is an oxymoron. However, in food, as in literature, sometimes a few simple things can produce something so complicated that you feel certain that the chef/author must have spent hours labouring over it.
Last night’s supper was one of those occasions. When I read cookbooks, it’s not just for fun or to lull me to sleep, promising me dreams of quinces and gilded gooses. In fact, I mentally compartmentalise dishes for future preparation. Somewhere in the dusty recesses of my brain, filed under ‘Recipes for Future Preparation’ are just that, recipes like the one I prepared last night, Greek Potatoes with Cod from Tamasin Day-Lewis's Good Tempered Food. I say prepared rather than cooked because the dish cooked itself really. It’s complexity lies within the fusion of good quality olive oil, onions, garlics, salt, pepper and long, slow cooking in the oven.
Like Cabbage Stuffed in the Troo Style or even a baked potato lubricated with unsalted butter, the fewer the ingredients, the greater the harmony between the flavours. Italian cooking has always utilised this theory. It is amazing how some butter, perhaps some chopped parsley, freshly ground pepper and flurry of icy sea salt flakes can transform a mediocre lunch into something fantastic.
Greek Potatoes with Cod has become an instant family favourite because it combines two of my favourite things: potatoes and an easy after work meal that tastes exciting and wholesome. I served it with homemade cheats mushy peas (in fact, better than non-cheats mushy peas in my opinion) but a simple salad and some bread to mop up the oily, thyme-infused juices would be just as good.

Ingredients (serves 2)
For the Potatoes:
800g Potatoes, peeled and cut into quarters longwise
1 Medium Onion, finely chopped
2 Cloves Garlic, finely chopped
Juice of Organic (unwaxed) Lemon
150ml good quality Olive Oil
Small handful fresh Thyme leaves
Salt and Pepper
Water to cover
For the Cod:
500g Cod Loin or Fillet
Little Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper
Butter for greasing the dish

METHOD:Preheat oven to 200c.
Lay the quartered potatoes in a roasting dish, so they fit snuggly but in one layer. Strew with the onion, garlic and thyme, season well, then anoint with the lemon juice and olive oil. Pour water over the potatoes until just covered. Cook in preheated oven, uncovered, for 45 minutes, then turn potatoes over. Cook for about another 45 minutes, or until cooked through.
15 minutes before the potatoes are done, heavily grease a baking dish, lay the cod loin in the dish, skin side down, season well, drizzle with olive oil and roast for about 10-15 minutes or until the flesh starts to flake away and a sharp knife goes through the fish without any resistance.
Serve, spooning the potato, onion and garlic scented oil over the cod.

CHEATS MUSHY PEAS:Ingredients:
Enough mushy peas for two
2 Cloves Garlic, peeled
1 tsp Vegetable or Chicken Stock Powder (Bouillon is a good organic brand) or use some fresh stock if you have some.
Dessertspoon Creme Fraiche
Large knob unsalted butter
Salt and Pepper
METHOD:Cover the mushy peas and garlic cloves with water and the sprinkle over the stock powder or liquid. Cook for about 2-4 minutes until defrosted and thoroughly warm.
Drain peas and garlic (reserving about 2 tablespoons of the cooking liquor). Put into a blender, with a tablespoon of the reserved liquor, and all the other ingredients. Blend until the peas are at the consistency you like. You may like them really smooth like a puree, or a bit lumpy. This takes no more than a few seconds in the blender. Taste for seasoning, add more stock if needed. Serve with the above Greek Potatoes and Cod or just plain Fish and Chips!

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Pies

On a quiet (and they are always quiet) Friday afternoon at work, my mind always drifts to what I will cook at the weekend. Usually it will be something encased in pastry, whether sweet, savoury or both.
Sometimes, a hastily prepared meal doesn’t feel satisfying; perhaps to the stomach they are, but not having enough time or being too tired to prepare something fancy often irritates me. Perhaps we’re just too hungry to wait for something (in which case it could be a BLT or bread and soup or pasta) or perhaps it’s because we’re halfway through the end of the month, and as usual, broke, so we have to have store cupboard meals. Don’t misunderstand me. Store cupboard meals can be great: comforting and filling. For example, last night, as we rifle through the last vestiges of our kitchen scraps, I made roast chicken risotto, using a chicken leg that I roasted and some chicken stock that I had made weeks ago from an old carcass. The deeply savoury chickeny-ess was infused through every tiny opaque grain, made creamier yet with a tablespoon of double cream (in turn left over from a delicious pasta dish that my husband had made earlier in the week). It was made sublime with the enhancements of fresh parsley and thyme leaves from my tiny herb garden and a swift grating of fresh Parmesan (no fridge, no matter how empty, should be without Parmesan, butter and cream – the triumvirate of many luxurious tasting pasta dishes, not to mention pies and mashed potato too!). But there is that unstated fact that a pie has to have a certain amount of care lavished on it, and a homemade pie always tastes special. Like it was made with love.
I am mostly despondent in the week at my lack of time for a couple of reasons. Notably, I do not have the financial luxury of staying at home all day to hone my cookery skills, which leads to my second reason: I am unable to hone my cookery skills due to lack of time. However, I do find that pies are fairly quick to turn out, (although my pastry can be hit or miss if I rush it - either too short or to tough), are filling and nearly always offer leftovers. A pie is a good way of making a little go a long way. I grew up on meat pies, made with the some left over mince or stew, bulked up with potato, carrot and swede and swathed in a deliciously short lard pastry (my mother and grandmother only use lard for their pastry – they find my usage of butter in pastry amusing. They may have a valid point). The meat pies were always wonderful served straight from the oven with some gravy and yet more mashed potato but I liked them best of all when cold and slathered in ketchup. In fact, I think that most pies are better served at room temperature or colder.
Us Brits love meat pies. We have whole cafes devoted to just to pie and mash. Rightly so. Sometimes there is a craving, so age old in our stomachs, that can only be satiated with a meat pie (the gravy just starting to ooze through the top crust, inside the rich sauce, maybe enriched with ale, maybe with oysters, some tender steak, a little kidney for flavour, some button mushrooms for texture and a further enhancement of that earthiness), dolloped with creamy mashed potato (but not that restaurant creamy puree of potato. I mean potato that might have the odd lump here and there and doesn’t drip from your spoon elastically but falls with a reassuringly sturdy ‘plop!’), ‘garnished’ with a good slathering of homemade mushy peas and the whole thing enveloped in gravy that has probably been made from granules but boy does it hit the spot so much better than pizza or a burger.
I have been thinking about writing about pies for a while, and you can see from previous writings, that I have made the odd pie here and there. Whether you call it a flan, a tart, a pie, a pasty, a pudding, a tourte or a parcel, the one thing that all of these wholesome delicacies have in common is a pastry jacket. Filo, puff, flaky, shortcrust, butter. For many years I would only eat the pastry of meat pies or pasties. Even now, if I am unsure of the origin of the filling (I have had to many crunchy bits of gristle between my teeth not to be cautious), I will still eat only the crust and feed it’s innards either to my husband or to our dogs.

But I digress. There are a couple of books on pies that I have been swotting up on recently, notably, The Art of the Tart and Tarts with Tops on, both by Tamasin Day-Lewis, which produce almost foolproof pies. Another one, which I brought back from America, is an old Penguin handbook from the early 80s called The Pie’s the Limit! by Judy Wells and Rick Johnson. This book is, despite it’s age, a wealth of knowledge. Not only does it offer the reader a huge variety of pies from all over the world, but also details the production of various types of pastry and the science behind pastry. This book makes me feel as though I actually could make puff pastry instead of just dreaming about it. And I long to make homemade Croissants.
A recent trip to the US encouraged my pie making internal baker to emerge, slightly shaky but eager to produce pastry as well (and as effortlessly) as my mother. The Coconut Cream Pie, baked by Perkins, gluttonously but joyously consumed by myself was my first taster of what you can actually put inside a tart shell. French Silk Pie, Grasshopper Pie, Pecan Pie, Apple Pie four inches deep; seductive names that conjure up 1950s housewives spinning around baby blue kitchens pulling twenty pies from enormous food bearing ovens. And I want a piece of that.

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Preserves

The idea of Home Preserving seems, at first, to be a daunting task. It conjures up all sorts of images of stoic great grandmothers bottling everything from corn to carrots to the kitchen sink. Home Preserving really is one of the last vestiges of true home cooking. After all, it is so much easier and convenient to buy jars of jam or marmalade or pickle than to spend several hours picking the produce, de-stalking it and then slowly cooking it. At this point, if your pectin level is'nt up to spec then you might just find yourself with a disappointingly runny preserve (although it will still taste delicious).
To make preserves, you do need to set a weekend aside because if you’re going to make jam, you might as well make some marmalade and some chutney too. It is a therapeutic, peaceful pursuit and relatively easy if you put your trust and faith into the science that lies behind a good set. Making preserves is not just a case of adding a bit more sugar here, a bit of salt here. There are fairly strict ratios that need to be adhered to. To be honest, if you’ve spent money on fruit (which, at this time of the year, you probably will have if you’re using strawberries or raspberries), what’s a little more time and consideration anyway?
My first foray into making preserves is mentioned below, when I attempted to replicate that Greek/Turkish delicacy, Preserved Lemons. I haven’t actually used them yet but each time I open the fridge, they look up at me, my first preserved fruit.
Some fruits come into their own once they have been through the preserving process. Sloes taste absolutely, mouth-puckeringly dry and bitter when picked straight from the tree, but slowly stewed to make a jelly or soused in Gin and they become other-worldly. Green tomatoes too, for those summers when they refuse to ripen, can be put to great use in delicious, bold, spicy chutneys or jams. Rosehips can make a delightfully, bright, shiny pink syrup which, supposedly, keeps all manner of illnesses at bay.
What I enjoy most about preserves is that they evoke a simpler time, a time when everything in the hedgerow was utilised because money was scarce and/or refrigerators hadn’t been invented.
It is a nice feeling to be given a bag of windfall plums or to gather the crab-apples that have fallen to the ground, and turn them into rows of colourful jars of jam on your windowsill, illuminated by an Autumn sun.
The fun part is the gathering of the fruit. I dragged my husband and two dogs along on a wild fruit picking expedition last weekend (before the rain and before the blackberries get their slimy jacket or ‘devil’s spit’ on them) and the sheer quantity of fruit around for the picking was immense. In a half hour period, we collected over 2 pounds of blackberries (and we were only limited to that because we didn’t have enough bags with us and the dogs were getting tetchy), the same of Sloes and some Rosehips, although I prefer to leave them on the hedgerow as they look so pretty. When I got home, I froze our bounty of blackberries and made a bottle of Sloe Vodka as a Christmas present for my grandmother, with still enough of those tiny bowling ball blue/black, shiny, painfully bitter globes left for next year.
An interesting by-product of Slow Gin that I discovered whilst surfing the net one dull afternoon at work, is sloe cider made from the gin soused sloes that are discarded once the purple liqueur is strained and decanted. I am eager to give this a try but it will probably have to wait until just before Christmas. The sloes are simply added to a good quality cider, which must give turn the golden apple elixir a lovely pinkish blush and a subtle juniper back note. We shall see.

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