How to Eat (38 page)

Put the remaining tablespoon of butter in the pan in which you’ve sautéed the onions and let it melt. Stir in the flour and keep stirring over medium heat for a few minutes as it turns golden. Whisk in the hot stock and continue whisking as it thickens. Add this sauce to the mushrooms and onions, along with the parsley.

Simmer everything together very gently for about 10 more minutes. Serve with steamed or boiled rice—and I mostly just do a buttery pile of basmati—or polenta.

OVEN-COOKED POLENTA

This is the
polenta senza bastone
(the
bastone
is the here-unneeded wooden baton traditionally used to stir the polenta while it cooks) from Anna del Conte’s
Classic Food of Northern Italy.
It’s much less work than traditionally cooked polenta and infinitely preferable to the quick-cook stuff.

Bring 2 quarts water or stock to simmering point. Remove the pan from the heat and add 2 teaspoons salt. If you are using bouillon cubes (you’ll need 4), here’s where you add them to the water, in which case you probably won’t need the salt.

Gradually add 2½ cups polenta or, more properly speaking, cornmeal, letting it fall in a fine rain through your fingers while you stir rapidly with a long wooden spoon. Return the pan to the heat and bring slowly to the boil, stirring constantly in the same direction. Boil for 5 minutes, still stirring. Now transfer the polenta to a buttered oven dish. I use an old and battered oval enamel casserole, but it doesn’t much matter and you’ll be able to see easily which of your various dishes will be the right size just by looking at the grainy mass. Cover with buttered foil and cook in a preheated 350°F oven for 1 hour.

CHEESES WITH BITTER SALAD

As for cheeses, keep in mind those that will crumble or meld into the salad on the plate. You are not looking for a cheese-and-crackers kind of assortment. The salad should be made mostly of Belgian endive. Throw in one of those packages of mixed greens (or maybe just half a package) for ballast if you want and make a strong lemony, oily dressing thickened either with 2 pounded anchovy fillets or 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard mixed with a quick grating of orange zest.

And maybe put the apples and crème fraîche on the table at the same time as the cheese and salad.

I like aromatic, unstructured food: stews, braises, soupy mixtures of vegetables to be eaten with warm mounds of rice, couscous, pasta, or just thick wedges of bread.

A thick, squashy root vegetable stew with couscous, an earthy, grainy, aromatic braise of carrots, turnips, parsnips, and squash, is the ideal soothing weekend lunch. Abroad (in Paris, mostly) I’ve eaten this with lamb, but I don’t like the greasiness when I make it myself, unless I boil up the lamb (2–3 pounds neck pieces, generously covered with salted water) the day before and skim the fat off when cool (and see recipe for Cawl on
page 94
). That way you get all the glorious sweetness of the meat and the well-cooked stringiness (well, let’s be frank here) that is so characteristic of this kind of stew. (See below, too, for a chicken couscous recipe.)

BOLSTERING WEEKEND LUNCH FOR 6

GOLDEN ROOT-VEGETABLE COUSCOUS OR CHICKEN STEW WITH COUSCOUS

COCONUT crÈME CARAMEL

I think of this as particularly good for weekend lunch if you’ve been feeling rather fragile; the food is soothing and so, too, are the rhythms of its preparation.

You do need to do a couple of things for this in advance—put the chickpeas in to soak (see
page 78
) and make the crème caramel. Neither of these activities should be too demanding even on a Friday for a Saturday lunch (morning for the chickpeas, evening for the crème caramel) after a long week at work. If you hate coconut (although the taste of it is subtle rather than pronounced here), then substitute for the coconut milk the same quantity of regular milk. But after the warm spiciness of the stew, the lightly aromatic coconut custard is just right; it offers a gentle but resolute ending to the meal.

Each time I do this I use different vegetables in differing quantities, but if that sort of permissiveness makes you feel unsafe, then follow this recipe word for word the first time and then gradually, as you do it and redo it, you will find you loosen up. Don’t think less of yourself for following orders to the letter. It takes time to learn when you can make free with a recipe and when it’s best to rein in the improvisatory spirit. Most of my mistakes have been as a result of fiddling about with a recipe the first time I’ve cooked it, rather than doing it as written, and then next time seeing where I could improve or change or develop it.

I’ve specified already ground spices here; it is certainly better if you dry-fry and then grind your own, but actually I resort mostly to the dried ones when I make this, and I wanted to be honest rather than high-minded here. I do buy good fresh spices, though.

Use vegetable stock if you want this to be vegetarian; otherwise use any stock—chicken, beef, lamb—that you want. And the stock doesn’t need to be strong; if you’re using bouillon cubes or cartons of stock, then use extra water to dilute them.

This recipe requires a lot of preparation, albeit of a basic and undemanding sort. I like a drink beside me and someone to talk to (or the radio to listen to). I peel, chop, assemble solidly—and then that’s it.

I use my couscoussier, but a big, deep pot will do. Obviously, you will need more or less liquid depending on the proportions of the cooking vessel, so be prepared to be flexible. Do remember that you can use extra water; there’s no need to have more stock on hand. Use a couple of saucepans if you don’t have anything very capacious.

Chief among the virtues of couscous is the speed with which it is cooked. I love it for its sweet, soft graininess, which needs nothing more than a nut or two of butter by way of dressing. Try to resist the modern tendency to use oil instead. When I make couscous just for myself or for the children, I often cook it just by immersing it in an equal volume of hot stock, but here I would soak, then steam it.

For serving, keep all the parts separate: the stew in one bowl, with plenty of juice; the grain in another; some harissa, that garlic-pounded paste of chilies, to the side. The culinary idea behind this is the contrast between spicy stew, spicier relish, and the plain, comforting blanket of grain. You can moosh them all up on your plate, but if they were all mixed up on the serving dish, it would be both too sloppy in texture and too monotone in taste.

Though it’s not strictly necessary, if you want some meat with this, get hold of some chorizo. But make sure you buy the spicy, paprika-tinted sausages rather than salami. If you happen to live near a shop that sells merguez (which are actually more traditional for this), then just grill them and serve them instead of the chorizo. Otherwise, use a cast-iron frying pan and cover the bottom with a film of olive oil. Prick the chorizo sausages, place them in the pan, and turn them so that they are sealed on all sides. Throw in a glass of red wine, lower the heat, and cook for about 10 minutes. Remove and slice each sausage diagonally into 3 squat logs.

GOLDEN ROOT-VEGETABLE COUSCOUS

FOR THE STEW

3 tablespoons olive oil

2 medium onions, quartered and sliced thickly

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 teaspoon each ground cinnamon, cumin, and coriander

½ teaspoon paprika

generous pinch of saffron strands

3 medium carrots, peeled and cut into 1-inch dice

2 medium parsnips, peeled and cut into 1-inch dice

2 medium turnips, peeled and cut into 1-inch dice

1 small kabocha or butternut squash, peeled and cut into 1-inch dice

½ medium rutabaga, peeled and cut into 1-inch dice

3 zucchini, peeled partially to make alternating ¼-inch strips of peel and flesh, then sliced ½-inch thick

4¼ cups chicken, beef, or vegetable stock

½ can (14.5 ounces) plum tomatoes, drained and roughly chopped, their liquid reserved

grated zest ½ large orange, plus juice from the whole orange (optional)

2/3 cup sultanas

1½ cans (14 ounces each) chickpeas or 8 ounces dried, soaked, and partly cooked chickpeas (see
page 78
)

salt

few drops chili oil or 1 teaspoon harissa (optional;
page 208
)

FOR THE COUSCOUS

½ cup pine nuts

4 cups quick-cooking couscous

2 tablespoons (¼ stick) unsalted butter, plus more, if desired

4–5 tablespoons snipped fresh coriander or parsley

Heat the olive oil in a big, deep pot or the bottom of a couscoussier and turn the onions in it for a few minutes. Add the garlic, the ground cinnamon, ground cumin, ground coriander, paprika, and saffron, and stir over a low to medium heat for 5 minutes. Add the carrots, parsnips, turnips, kabocha, rutabaga, and zucchini and turn briskly, but don’t worry if you can’t do this very efficiently—there are a lot of vegetables. After about 5 minutes add the stock, the tomatoes, the orange zest, the sultanas (I love sultanas and hate raisins; if you feel differently, then do act differently), and the chickpeas. Turn again so that, if possible, all gets at least partially covered by the stock. Add the reserved tomato juice from the can and some water if the liquid level is looking too low. Season with the salt, taste, and, if you want to, add the orange juice. The stew benefits from an aromatic hint of orange, but don’t be too heavy-handed.

Cook this fragrant, golden stew for 20–30 minutes, until the vegetables are tender but not mushy (at least not all of them—some will be beginning to fray around the edges, and that’s good) and the liquid has formed a thin but not watery sauce. Taste and add chili oil or the harissa if you want it to have a bit more punch.

Meanwhile, prepare the couscous. Put the pine nuts in a hot, dry frying pan and toast until they are golden and giving off a sweet resiny aroma. Set aside. Thirty minutes or so before the stew is cooked, put the couscous in a bowl, cover it with cold water by about 1½ inches, and soak it for 10 minutes. Drain and put the couscous in either a steamer basket or the top part of the couscoussier; you may have to do this in 2 batches. Place the butter on top of the grain and put the couscous on top of the pot with the stew in it. Cover and allow to steam-heat for 5–10 minutes; the butter should have started melting by the time it’s ready. Transfer to a warmed dish or flat round plate, adding more butter if you like. Fluff up with a fork and scatter with pine nuts.

To serve, pour the stew gently into a big round shallow bowl (and this should be warmed), strew with the parsley or coriander, and bring to table with the couscous.

CHICKEN STEW WITH COUSCOUS

In the Middle East or North Africa, chicken would be used primarily to flavor the broth, not to yield much meat to eat. But I figure that, if people are expecting to eat the meat, you must have 2 small chicken parts per person. Chicken is better if it is freshly jointed, so I get the butcher to cut one large chicken (about 5 pounds) into 10–12 parts. You can, however, use thighs from the supermarket.

Don’t worry if the stock isn’t very strong for this—the broth should be light. The point of couscous is, I stress, to have the bland grains as a base for the vegetables and chicken, moistened by the gentle broth and given heat and intensity by the harissa.

You will need to start on this a good day in advance in order to soak the chickpeas. If you prefer to use canned chickpeas, you can, but I think it’s worth the effort (not in itself exactly arduous) of soaking and cooking the dried ones.

8 ounces chickpeas, soaked (see
page 78
), or 1½ cans (14 ounces each)

3 medium onions, 1 halved, 2 sliced thinly

1 bouquet garni (see
page xx
)

4 garlic cloves, unpeeled

2 drops olive oil

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon ground cumin

¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper

pinch salt

10–12 chicken parts (see headnote)

1 pound carrots, peeled, halved lengthways, and cut into chunks

4 celery stalks, 1 left whole, 3 sliced thinly

1 heaping teaspoon harissa (
page 208
), plus more, for serving

Put soaked chickpeas in a saucepan with the halved onion, bouquet garni, and the garlic, cover by about 4 inches with cold water, and add the olive oil. Cover the pan, bring to the boil, and then cook at a gentle boil for an hour. Leave in the pan.