How to Eat (13 page)

And I know I said that leftovers must not be reformulated in any way, but here is the exception.

ED VICTOR’S TURKEY HASH

Obviously, one can’t be specific about amounts; who knows how much you’ve got left or how many people you are trying to feed? I give you this recipe, then, just as my literary agent, Ed Victor, gave it to me. Use whatever quantities and proportions feel right, taste good, to you.

Sauté chopped onions and green peppers in a mixture of butter and olive oil in a large saucepan. Add diced turkey (white and dark meat) plus any leftover stuffing to the cooked onion and peppers mixture, and cook till warmed through. You can season it at this stage with salt and pepper.

Then stir in pitted ripe black olives and toasted almonds. Finally, drizzle over the top some beaten eggs mixed with heavy cream, and stir till set.

Optionally, you can finish the hash off with some grated Parmesan on top and brown it under the grill.

Voilà!
It’s usually much, much better than the turkey itself. In fact, it’s the only reason to eat turkey on Christmas Day!

I don’t concede that last point, but we should allow a man his prejudices.

POTATOES

You don’t need to do very much to make cold cuts interesting, as long as the meat’s good to start off with. I suggest serving alongside potatoes, cut small and roasted till crisp. Cut them into about ½-inch dice, toss in a freezer bag with garlic-infused oil (see
page 459
) and dried thyme, and then turn into a baking pan, or just sprinkle with the thyme and drop in a roasting pan with 2–3 tablespoons hot goose fat. Roast for about an hour at 400°F. When the potatoes are done, remove to a plate and sprinkle with coarse sea salt. Work on rations of about 1⁄3 pound potatoes per person. And serve with two salads: one green, another of tomatoes.

ROASTED WHOLE GARLIC CLOVES AND SHALLOTS

My other regular standby is a plate, a huge plate, of roasted whole garlic cloves and shallots. When I’m eating hot meat alongside (as with the chicken on page 7), I don’t peel them, but with cold cuts I do. This is made easier if you blanch them first. So, preheat the oven to 325°F. And, figuring on half a head of garlic and ¼ pound of shallots per person, peel the shallots and put them in a baking pan in the oven, coated with some olive oil. They’ll need about 45 minutes and the garlic will need about 25, so give the shallots a 20-minute head start. Meanwhile, separate the garlic cloves, put them in a saucepan of cold water, bring to the boil and let boil for 2 minutes. Drain and peel the garlic; the blanching will have made it very easy. Just exert pressure on one end of the clove and it will pop out of its skin at the other. Put the garlic in its own baking pan, with some olive oil, too, and roast.

When both garlic and shallots are cooked, mix on a large plate and sprinkle salt and chopped parsley over them. I know half a head of garlic each and all those shallots sounds a lot, but people always seem to eat incredible amounts of this. You can also eat them cold, with a little more olive oil and a drop or two of balsamic vinegar poured over them, along with a load of fresh chopped parsley and maybe some toasted pine nuts. The vegetables reheat well, too, if you stir them over a low heat in a heavy-bottomed saucepan on the burner, so don’t skimp.

LATKES

If you want to make latkes to eat with the cold meats, then—for six or so people—push about 4½ pounds of peeled potatoes through the grater disc of the food processor. Remove and drain in a strainer, pushing well to extract all excess liquid. Then fit the metal blade in the processor and put a peeled medium onion, coarsely chopped, 3 eggs, 1 teaspoon salt, some pepper, ¼ cup flour, plus a scant ¼ teaspoon baking powder or fine matzo meal in the processor and process briefly. Add the grated potatoes and give a quick pulse till the mixture is pulpy but not totally puréed. You should have a thick mass; add more flour if it’s at all runny.

Fry the latkes in lumps of about 1 tablespoon each in a heavy-bottomed frying pan with hot oil bubbling away in it to a depth of about 1 inch. About 5 minutes a side should do it, maybe even less. Drain on paper towels. These are not great if they are left lying around to cool off, but you can fry them earlier, then reheat in a very hot oven, about 450°F, for 5–10 minutes. You can even fry them, freeze them, defrost, and reheat them—or so I’m told—but I am not the freeze-ahead type.

And while we’re mixing culinary cultures, I should mention that cookbook writer Sameen Rushdie’s potatoes with whole spices are wonderful with the Christmas cold cuts. I don’t include the recipe here just because it includes nigella seeds, but I admit that I was inspired to cook this for the first time by just such embarrassingly egomaniac promptings. You might need to go to a specialty store for them; you should know, then, that their Indian name is kalonji; or you can buy the particular spices listed below—called panchphoran—ready mixed.

PANCHPHORAN ALOO (POTATOES IN WHOLE SPICES)

½ teaspoon fenugreek seeds

½ teaspoon nigella seeds

½ teaspoon black mustard seeds

½ teaspoon white cumin seeds

½ teaspoon fennel seeds

about 2 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 pounds potatoes, peeled and cut into small dice

½ teaspoon turmeric

½ teaspoon ground red chili pepper

salt

3–4 tablespoons freshly chopped coriander

Mix together the whole spices. Using a wok or other nonstick pan, take the minimum amount of oil needed to fry the potatoes and fry them over high heat to start with, then turn the heat down and cover. When the potatoes are a little more than half done, add the turmeric, red chili powder, and some salt, closely followed by the mixed-together whole spices. Stir to combine and put the lid back on once again. When the potatoes are nearly ready (and you will have to be vigilant to ensure they don’t get too soft), take the lid off, turn the heat up, and stir-fry to enable any excess liquid to evaporate.

Garnish with the coriander and serve.

LENTIL AND CHESTNUT SOUP

Another way of adding zip to cold leftovers is to serve hot soup first.

I first had this aromatic, velvety, buff-colored soup at Le Caprice, a fashionable London restaurant, about ten years ago, and still hanker after it. This is, with some help from the restaurant, my interpretation of it.

I have specified vegetable stock, and I tend to use vegetable bouillon cubes, but obviously you can use chicken stock if you prefer.

Peeling chestnuts gives me a nervous breakdown, so for this, I use the commercially packed whole chestnuts (and so, I have since found out, does Le Caprice).

2 tablespoons olive oil, goose fat, or butter

1 small onion, minced

½ leek, minced

1 medium carrot, minced

1 celery stalk, minced

1 cup red lentils

6 1/3 cups vegetable stock

8 ounces canned chestnuts

2–3 tablespoons chopped parsley

heavy cream, for serving

Heat the oil in the pan, add the minced vegetables, and let sweat and soften. Add the lentils and stir, then add the stock. Bring to the boil and simmer until the lentils are very soft, about 40 minutes. Add the chestnuts and simmer for a further 20 minutes or so. Purée in a blender or food processor until smooth, adding water as you need. When you want to serve it, reheat and, at the table, sprinkle each full bowl of soup with the parsley and lace with the cream. Serves 4–6.

You can otherwise make any old supper, whether of cold meats or whatever’s lying around, seem a little more effortful (and indeed it will be a little more effortful) by making a dessert to have after. A hot dessert, I mean. And my favorite for this time of year is one of the recipes I did for my first piece as food writer for
Vogue.
It’s a version of the rightly named queen of puddings, which has mystifyingly never come into fashionable focus like bread pudding, to which it is grandly, indubitably, superior.

CHRISTMAS QUEEN OF PUDDINGS

The only things that are remotely Christmassy about this are that I use marmalade (sweetened with golden syrup) in place of the more usual jam, replace the lemon zest with orange zest (the smell of oranges, see also clementine cake below, always feels Christmassy to me), and I make the crumbs (in the processor as normal) not out of bread but out of pandoro, one of those yeasty cakes (this one’s unfruited; see
page 461
) that Italians eat in significant numbers at this time of year. You don’t need to get pandoro; you could just as easily use brioche or, indeed, the normal white bread crumbs.

And as Christmas is very much the season for déclassé liqueurs, I would serve this with heavy cream with a hint of Grand Marnier or Cointreau whipped up into it.

1½ cups pandoro bread crumbs or brioche or plain white bread crumbs

1½ teaspoons superfine sugar

zest of 1 orange

orange-flower water (optional)

2½ cups milk

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, plus more

5 eggs, separated

3–5 tablespoons good-quality marmalade

1–2 teaspoons golden syrup or light corn syrup, to taste

½ cup superfine sugar, plus more for sprinkling

Put the pandoro crumbs, sugar, and the zest of the orange with 1–2 drops orange-flower water, if you are using it, in a bowl. Heat the milk and 2 tablespoons butter in a saucepan until hot but just not boiling, and then stir into the bowl of flavored crumbs. Leave to steep for about 10 minutes, and then thoroughly beat in the egg yolks.

Grease a shallow dish (I use a round dish about 4 inches deep, 10 inches in diameter, because that’s what I’ve got, but an oval dish is traditional) with butter and pour in the crumb custard. Bake at 325°F for 20–30 minutes, depending on depth of dish.

When it’s ready, the custard should be set on top but may still be runny underneath. Let it stand out of the oven for a few minutes so that the top of the custard gets a bit harder while you turn your attention to the marmalade and egg whites. Heat the marmalade in a saucepan. Add the golden syrup to taste to the hot marmalade and then pour it over the surface of the custard. Meanwhile, whisk the egg whites until stiff and then whisk in half the sugar. In a few seconds the egg whites will become smooth and gleaming; then fold in the remaining sugar with a metal spoon.

Cover your pudding with the meringue mixture, sprinkle with sugar, and then put it back in the oven for about 20 minutes or until the meringue is browned and crispish. Serves 4–6.

CLEMENTINE CAKE

Another fixed item in my Christmas repertoire is my clementine cake. This is suitable for any number of reasons. First, it’s made of clementines, which are seasonal. Then there’s the fact that you need to cook them for 2 hours; you’re more likely to be hanging around the house and to feel in the mood for this sort of thing during the Christmas period. It’s incredibly easy to make; even if you’re stressed out, it won’t topple you over into nervous collapse. And, finally, it’s such an accommodating kind of cake; it keeps well, indeed it gets better after a few days, and it is perfect either as a dessert with some crème fraîche or as cake to be eaten with seasonally sociable visitors in the midmorning or afternoon. What more do you want?

It was only after I did this a few times—the route it took to get to me was circuituous, as these things can be—that I realized it was more or less food writer Claudia Roden’s orange and almond cake.

It is a wonderfully damp and aromatic flourless cake; it tastes like one of those sponges you drench, while cooling, with syrup, only you don’t have to. This is the easiest cake I know.

4–5 clementines (about 1 pound total weight)

6 eggs

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar

2 1/3 cups ground almonds

1 heaping teaspoon baking powder

Put the clementines in a pot with cold water to cover, bring to the boil, and cook for 2 hours. Drain and, when cool, cut each clementine in half and remove the seeds. Then chop everything finely—skins, pith, fruit—in the processor (or by hand, of course). Preheat the oven to 375°F. Butter and line an 8-inch springform pan.

Beat the eggs. Add the sugar, almonds, and baking powder. Mix well, adding the chopped clementines. I don’t like using the processor for this, and frankly, you can’t balk at a little light stirring.

Pour the cake mixture into the prepared pan and bake for an hour, when a skewer will come out clean; you’ll probably have to cover the cake with foil after about 40 minutes to stop the top burning. Remove from the oven and leave to cool, on a rack, but in the pan. When the cake’s cold, you can take it out of the pan. I think this is better a day after it’s made, but I don’t complain about eating it any time.

I’ve also made this with an equal weight of oranges, and with lemons, in which case I increase the sugar to 1¼ cups and slightly anglicize it, too, by adding a glaze made of confectioners’ sugar mixed to a paste with lemon juice and a little water.