How to Eat (10 page)

I don’t normally go in for individual puddings, each precious darling to be ceremoniously unmolded from its ramekin. But I make an exception here, would have to. As with the Italian dessert for which it is named, this fragrant cream, accompanied by a gooseberry compote, needs to be set with as little gelatin as possible. I’ve tried with big molds and just can’t set it enough without turning it halfway into rubber. These are perfection as they are, and anyway, I use a mixture of teacups, dariole molds, and ramekins, feeling that the pleasurable lack of uniformity makes up for any potential dinkiness. Line whichever molds you choose (you can, of course, use custard cups) with plastic film, pushing it well against the sides and over the rim so you’ve got a tuggable edge; it may make for the odd wrinkle or crease on the surface of the set cream, but that doesn’t matter; what does is that you will be able to unmold them easily.

Note that here and elsewhere throughout the book I call for leaf gelatin, which works best for me and produces the most delicate result. I cannot use granulated gelatin for the life of me, but I have to accept that others can and am prepared, grudgingly, to accommodate them.

¾ cup heavy cream

2 teaspoons orange-flower water

1 teaspoon vanilla

¼ teaspoon grated nutmeg

6 tablespoons superfine sugar, plus more, if needed

3 leaves gelatin or 1 envelope granulated gelatin

Heat the cream over low heat in saucepan with the orange-flower water, vanilla, and nutmeg. When it comes bubbling to a simmering near-boil, turn it off; remove from the heat. Then stir in the sugar and bring back to boiling point. Taste to see if more sugar is needed and then strain into a large measuring cup. Soak the leaves of gelatin in cold water to cover until softened, or sprinkle the granulated gelatin over ¼ cup cold water to soften, about 5 minutes in either case. Transfer softened granulated gelatin to a double boiler and heat it over simmering water until the granules have dissolved completely and the mixture is clear, about 1 minute, or dissolve the gelatin in a microwave at high power, about 1 minute. Squeeze the leaves out if using, and then beat them into the warm cream in the cup, or add the dissolved granulated gelatin to the cream and blend well. Make sure the leaves are dissolved, if using, and dispersed, then pour the cream into the film-lined molds. Cool and then put in the fridge overnight.

I originally used elderflowers to flavor the panna cotta; with it I served this contrastingly lumpy gooseberry compote. (The Victorians knew well and invoked often the muscatty aptness of the combination of elderflowers and gooseberry. About many things they were wrong; about this they were right.) The compote, however, is wonderful with the orange-flower-water-scented version.

To make it, put 5 cups gooseberries in a pan with 1½ cups water and 6 tablespoons of sugar. Bring it all to the boil and simmer for a couple of minutes. Drain, reserving syrup, then put the fruit in a bowl and return the lightly syrupy juices to the pan. Bring it to the boil again and let boil for 5 minutes. Pour it into a bowl or jug to cool while the fruit cools separately in its bowl. Then, when you’re about it eat, put the gooseberries in a shallow dish and cover with the syrup.

GROUSE

Grouse (see
page 459
for information about its availability) should be roasted plain, first smeared thickly with butter, in a 400°F oven for 30–45 minutes (the size of the birds varies, but you want the flesh to be rubied and juicy, but not underdone to the point of tough quiveriness). Eat the grouse with bread sauce (see
page 58
) or stuffed with thyme and mascarpone (yes, really), as on
page 151
.

DAMSONS

Damsons are a glorious fruit. They can’t be eaten raw and are a chore to prepare and cook, but it’s only once a year. . . .

DAMSON FOOL

I sometimes make damson ice cream, but damson fool is the recipe for which I wait most greedily. This fool is not difficult to make, but it is stunning, utterly distinctive; you can taste in it both the almost metallic depth of the sour fruit and billowy sweetness of the bulky cream. And it’s wonderful after grouse.

1 pound damsons

2 teaspoons each dark and light muscovado sugar (see
page 460
), or dark and light brown sugar, and superfine sugar, plus more, if desired

¼ teaspoon allspice

1 cup heavy cream, whipped with 2 tablespoons confectioners’ sugar

Put the whole damsons (try to stone them now and you’ll go really mad) in a saucepan with ½ cup water and the sugars, bring to the boil, and cook till soft. Push through a strainer or food mill to get rid of the stones and add the spice and more sugar to taste if you think they need it.

When cool, stir into the sugar-whipped cream and pour either into individual pots or into a bowl. This will also fill 6 glasses of the sort you’d eat pudding from, but if you’re putting the fool in a bowl, then count on feeding only 4.

QUINCES

Quince, the apple that Paris presented to Helen and maybe even the one that grew in the garden of Eden (although there is, it’s argued, a more convincing academic case to be made for the pomegranate here), is a ravishing mixture of One Thousand and One Nights exotic and Victorian kitchen homeliness. It looks like a mixture between apple and pear but tastes like neither. And actually the taste is not the point; what this fruit is all about is heady, perfect fragrance. I have something of an obsession for quinces, although they are in the shops only for a scant eight weeks, aren’t at all easy to deal with, and can’t be eaten raw. In the old days, quinces were kept in airing cupboards to perfume the linen, pervading the house with their honeyed but sharp aroma, so you needn’t feel bad if you buy a bowlful and then just watch them rot in a kitchen or wherever.

As for cooking with quinces, what you should know is that for all their hardness, they bruise very easily. Whenever I have a batch of quinces, at least a third of them have been riddled within with speckles, or worse, what looks like rust. I just ignore it, unless of course it’s obviously rotten. Anyway, quinces darken as they cook, going from glassy yellow to coral to deepest, burnt terracotta; the odd bit of bruising really won’t show.

You should add a quince, peeled, cored, and sliced or chunked, to apple pie or crumble. Poach them as you might pears (only longer, and see the recipe for quinces in muscat wine on page 329) or make mostarda. Although I am not someone who goes in for preserve making, I do make mostarda.

MOSTARDA DI VENEZIA

There’s mostarda di Cremona, which has become modishly familiar in Britain, those stained-glass-window-colored gleaming pots of fruits glossily preserved in mustard oil; no one, even in Italy, apparently, makes their own. But mostarda di Venezia is different. You can’t buy it and it’s easy to make. It’s just quinces boiled up with white wine, with the addition of sugar, candied peel, and mustard powder. It’s wonderful with any cold meat (which makes it very useful for Christmas and, as you have to leave it a month or so before eating, rather well timed for it, too). I risk a culinary culture clash by eating it alongside couscous and curries and to pad out the sort of low-fat, highly flavored food on pages 366–383. Or you can eat it with a dollop of mascarpone, sweetened (and perhaps bolstered with egg, as on
page 107
) and flavored with rum, as dessert.

This recipe is adapted from the one in
Classic Food of Northern Italy
by Italian food writer Anna del Conte; the recipe, as these things do, has a mixed parentage of its own. I have changed it a little. I simplify the procedure (see below) and also make it hotter and with almost double the amount of candied fruit. Now, I loathe and detest most commercial candied fruit, but it’s different here, not least because you must not use the already diced, bitter and oversweet at the same time, vile stuff from the supermarket. Search out the good imported candied fruit in whole pieces.

The second time I made mostarda di Venezia, I didn’t peel and core the quinces. It’s such hard work. Instead I just roughly chopped the fruit and then pushed the lot through a fine food mill. Laziness prompted this modification, but as the peel and core help the set and intensify the flavor, you should have no qualms. If you don’t own a food mill, I suppose you could just push the fruit through a strainer, but that’s strenuous too. So if you don’t own this cheap and useful piece of equipment, it would be easier to peel, quarter, and core to start with.

4 pounds quinces, roughly chopped

1 bottle white wine

grated rind and juice of 1 lemon

5½ cups sugar

8 tablespoons English mustard powder

1 teaspoon salt

8–9 ounces candied fruit, cut into small cubes

Put the quinces in a saucepan and cover them with the wine. Add the lemon rind and juice and cook until soft, about 40 minutes. Purée the mixture by pushing it through a food mill and add the sugar. Return to the pan. Dissolve the mustard powder in a little hot water and add to the purée with the salt and the candied fruit. Cook gently until the liquid is reduced and the mostarda becomes dense and, normally, deeper-colored, 20–30 minutes.

Sterilize five 1-pint jars (I find the dishwasher’s performance on this adequate) and fill with the mostarda. When it is cool, cover, seal, and store away. Keep for about a month before you use it.

WHITE TRUFFLES

No greedy person’s mention of foods in season could ignore the white truffle. I don’t really understand the fuss about black truffles, but a white truffle—called by Rossini the Mozart of
funghi—
is something else. And you don’t do anything to it. You just shave it. And if you’re buying a truffle, you may as well go the whole hog and buy the thing with which to shave it over a plate of buttery egg pasta or into an equally rich risotto made with good broth. It is instant culinary nirvana. And although expensive, so much less so, unbelievably less so, than eating it in a restaurant.

CHRISTMAS

Seasonal food doesn’t come much more seasonal than at Christmas; this is not exactly to do with what’s in season, but with what’s expected of it—and you. If, like the majority of British, you are going to be cooking multiple meals at this time, or even just one, for upward of six people, you will need to be organized. It is hard not to feel swamped by food and food preparation during the holidays, and even if you like cooking, Christmas can induce panic and depression. And the quantity of food involved can also begin to instill a sense of unease; so much excess is unsettling, and it feels decadent to be the creator of it in the first place.

This isn’t, of course, purely a moral distaste—after all, food is celebratory and it’s perfectly respectable to choose to appreciate its plentifulness—but, rather, a narcissistic anxiety. We feel uncomfortable with the prospect of overeating. But just as we fear it, we court it, because the truth is that we don’t have to plow our way through seasonal cakes and chocolates and nuts and pies. We feel we have an excuse, and so we plunge into an orgy of overindulgence that is utterly unnecessary and that makes us feel both guilty and resentful at the same time.

For me, an urban person, Christmas is rather like being in the country: not much to do apart from eat and drink. I end up suffering from boredom-induced bloat. But cooking itself can make a difference. It’s the amount of packaged and processed food around at Christmas that makes us feel truly bad. Not all Christmas food has to be the sort that leaves us stultified and slumped over the table for hours after we’ve eaten it.

Christmas Day itself is, in my view, nonnegotiable. It’s fashionable to decry the traditional English Christmas lunch as boring and the turkey invariably served as dry, but I love it all and on December 26 start longing for next year’s lunch. My great-grandmother was so keen on Christmas lunch, and felt it was such a waste to eat it only once a year, that she had a second one each Midsummer’s Day in celebration of the summer solstice. This was the first sign of great-grandmother’s eccentricity.

Some British argue for a Christmas lunch goose; I’ve eaten it, and have no fierce objections, but I don’t think I would like to see my turkey ousted by it. Cooking a goose for a Christmas Eve or Day dinner seems to me the best idea, as one can then make sure at least of getting some excellent leftovers. Goose is anyway much better cold than hot.

What I really object to are the bright magazine alternatives to traditional Christmas dining—medallions of pheasant in Armagnac sauce, guinea fowl with grapes and sweet potato galettes, rolled breast of turkey with chestnut and pine nut stuffing and celeriac rösti. I do see that if you’re a vegetarian, some alternative is required. But, frankly, I would still avoid the nut-roast route. Forget the whole thing and eat as normal on Christmas Day—even consider a simplified menu. I would be happier with this than with some jaunty ersatz number.

But even if you’ve got Christmas Day dining figured out, there is still the other holiday-time to think of. Remember that anything you serve for Christmas Eve or Day can be devised for enjoyment after. I am a huge fan of cold leftovers. Resist, please, the tendency to camouflage, to go in for makeovers. Cold beef, as long as it hasn’t been overcooked, is wonderful, as is cold ham, cold duck, maybe even some cold lamb.