How to Eat (5 page)

Put the sheets of meringues in the oven for about 40 minutes for the smaller size, about 70 minutes for the larger. When they feel firm (and you can lift one up to check that the underside’s cooked), turn the oven off, but keep the meringues in there until completely cold. If you take them out too soon, the abrupt change in temperature will make them hard and dry or even crack, and they’re best with a hint of chewiness within. Once they are cold, you can keep them for a long time in an airtight tin.

And here are a couple of other recipes for which I use my egg whites (neither requires whisking).

MACAROONS

Mix 1½ cups ground almonds with 1 cup superfine sugar and stir in 2 egg whites. Combine well into a thick cream, then add 2 tablespoons of Italian 00 flour (see
page 458
) or all-purpose flour and 1 teaspoon of almond extract. Pipe—through a plain tip—into rounds about 2 inches in diameter, leaving space between each, onto baking sheets lined with parchment paper or Cook-Eze. Traditionally, you should press a split almond into the center of each, but I don’t always bother. Cook in a preheated 325°F oven for about 20 minutes. The macaroons will harden slightly as they cool, so be careful to time them to be softish in the center, and chewy. Don’t panic at their cracked surface; macaroons are meant to look like that.

This amount should make about 15 macaroons.

LANGUE DE CHAT

Langue de chat are the sort of cookies that are wonderful with any dessert you eat with a small spoon. You take 4 tablespoons each of butter and vanilla sugar (see
page 72
) or superfine sugar and cream them until light and fluffy. To cream, simply put the ingredients in a large bowl and beat with a wooden spoon until soft and pale. (It helps if you beat the butter first, till it’s really soft, and then beat in the sugar gradually, handful by sprinkled-in handful.) Add 2 egg whites, stirring until you have a curdy mass, add ½ teaspoon of vanilla extract and then ½ cup flour, preferably Italian 00 but otherwise all-purpose, and beat or stir till you have a stiffish cream. Pipe through a plain small-sized tip to form small strips like squeezed-out toothpaste, 2½–3 inches long, on a lined—or greased and then floured—baking sheet. These spread enormously, so leave a clear 2 inches between each. Bake in a preheated 400°F oven for about 8 minutes, until they’re pale gold in the center, darker gold at the edges. These quantities make about 30.

For other ways to use up egg whites, see the hazelnut cake recipe on page 324 (substituting other nuts if you prefer), the pavlova on
page 336
, and the potato pancakes on
page 220
.

BÉCHAMEL

Béarnaise may be my favourite sauce, but béchamel is unquestionably the most useful.

All it is is a roux, which is to say a mixture of equal amounts of butter and flour (although I sometimes use a little more butter), cooked for a few minutes, to which you add, gradually, milk, and then cook until thickened.

I always use Italian 00 flour. The difference lies in the milling; these flours are finer-milled than all-purpose flour and they cook faster, so the flouriness cooks out more quickly. Undeniably, this is useful, but ordinary all-purpose flour has been used perfectly well to make béchamel for eons, so don’t agonize over it. I find, though, that I keep no ordinary all-purpose flour in the house—just Italian 00 (superior for pastry, too; see
page 458
) and self-raising, which cuts down on clutter and lots of half-used packages in the cupboard.

1½ tablespoons unsalted butter

1½ tablespoons Italian 00 or all-purpose flour

1 cup milk

salt and freshly milled white or black pepper

whole nutmeg

Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan and then stir in the flour, cooking for 2–3 minutes until you have a walnut (sized and colored) paste. Meanwhile, heat the milk (I do this in a measuring cup in the microwave—very
moderne
) and take the pan with the roux off the heat. Gradually, using a whisk, beat the warm milk into it. Proceed slowly and cautiously to avoid lumps. Keep stirring and adding, adding and stirring, and when all the milk is smoothly incorporated, season with salt, pepper, and a grating of the nutmeg. If it does go lumpy, blitz it in your blender or with a hand-held equivalent.

Return to the heat and cook, at a lowish simmer, stirring all the time, for about 5 minutes (at least twice that if you’re using ordinary all-purpose flour) until the sauce has thickened and has no taste of flouriness. Add some more nutmeg before using. And if you want to make your béchamel in advance, you can stop a skin forming by pouring a thin layer of milk or melted butter on top. Makes about 1 cup.

If you want a more intensely flavored sauce, heat 1 cup of milk first with 1 onion, ½ white part of a leek, sliced, or some sliced scallion whites, and 2 bay leaves or some mace (or whatever flavor it is you wish to intensify). Let it infuse, lid on, off the heat for 20 minutes or so before proceeding with the sauce.

CHEESE SAUCE

To make cheese sauce, add a pinch of English mustard powder or cayenne along with the flour and about ½–1 cup (depending on how you want to use your cheese sauce) grated cheddar or Gruyère, or half Gruyère, half Parmesan, at the end.

PARSLEY SAUCE

For parsley sauce—heavenly with cooked ham or to blanket fava beans—just infuse the milk with the stalks from a decent bunch of parsley. Then blanch the parsley leaves (although I have to say I don’t always bother), dry them thoroughly, chop them finely, and add them when stirring in the milk, sprinkling over a little more parsley at the end. And you can chop up leftover ham and mix it with the cold sauce, together with some dry mashed potatoes and possibly chopped gherkins or capers, to make parsley and ham patties. I sometimes add 1 egg yolk and 2–3 tablespoons heavy cream to make a more voluptuous parsley sauce—especially good with poached smoked fish and mashed potato. (And you can make patties out of these, too.)

PARSLEY AND HAM PATTIES

This is the way I make béchamel sauce most of the time. My mother’s method was the same as above, except she put a little nut of a chicken bouillon cube—a quarter to a third of a cube—in the pan along with the butter and flour and made roux of them all together. This makes a good savory sauce; the stock isn’t very pronounced, it just gives a more flavorful saltiness. So make really sure you don’t season without thinking.

MY MOTHER’S WHITE SAUCE

I use this method to make a white sauce to coat leeks or onions, using half milk and half the water the onions or leeks have been cooking in. Sometimes, even better, I use half light cream and half the vegetable cooking water. If no cream’s available, I beat in an extra nut of butter at the end.

VEGETABLE SOUP

A vegetable soup doesn’t really require a recipe, and I certainly don’t want to suggest you get out your measuring cups to make it with mechanical accuracy. But it’s helpful to have a working model for a plain but infinitely variable soup. This one is not exactly the mix of carrot, parsnip, and turnip my mother used to make, and which we knew as nip soup, but is based on its memory.

I use vegetable bouillon cubes to make the stock for this most of the time, but if I’ve got some good organic vegetables for the soup that taste properly and vigorously of themselves, I use water. A friend of mine swears that if you use Evian or other bottled still water it makes all the difference, but I haven’t quite got round to that yet.

There are two ways to go about preparing the vegetables for this. For a chunkier soup, chop them roughly (with the exception of the leek, which is sliced), as I indicate below, or put the whole lot in a food processor and pulse it briefly until chopped medium-fine. This will give you a soup with a finer texture. If it’s a smooth, velvety texture you’re after, follow the directions about puréeing the soup.

Although my hand is pretty well permanently stuck, culinarily speaking, around the neck of a bottle of Marsala, I admit that there isn’t a vegetable soup in the land that doesn’t benefit from the addition of a little dry sherry.

3 tablespoons olive oil, or 3 tablespoons butter and a drop of oil

1 medium onion, roughly chopped

2 medium carrots, peeled and roughly chopped

1 turnip, peeled and roughly chopped

1 parsnip, peeled and roughly chopped

1 floury potato, peeled and roughly chopped

1 celery stalk, roughly chopped

1 medium leek, white part only, sliced thickly

salt

4 cups vegetable stock

1 bouquet garni (see
page xx
)

freshly milled black pepper

whole nutmeg (optional)

1–2 tablespoons dry sherry

2–3 tablespoons fresh parsley, chives, or chervil, for serving

Heat the oil, or butter with its drop of oil, in a large, wide saucepan (one which has a lid, preferably) and then add the chopped vegetables and the leek to it, turning all over a few times so they all have a slight slick of fat. Sprinkle with salt, cover, and, on a low heat, let them half-fry, half-braise until softened, 10–15 minutes, shaking the pan from time to time and occasionally opening the lid to stir (making sure nothing’s sticking or burning at the bottom) before putting the lid back on again. Pour in the stock, adding the bouquet garni and a good grind of pepper, and bring, uncovered, to a simmer, then cook for 20–40 minutes (exactly how long depends on the age of the vegetables, the size you’ve chopped them, the dimensions of the pan, and the material of which the pan’s made).

Serve as is or, for a finer texture, blend or process the cooked soup or push it through a food mill. Alternatively, if you’ve got one of those stick blenders, you can do an agreeably rough purée in the saucepan. Sometimes I take out a couple of ladlefuls, blend or process them, and put them back into the soup to thicken it without turning it all to mush. Season to taste with salt and pepper and, optionally, a bit of grated nutmeg at the end, and stir in the sherry before serving, sprinkling over fresh herbs as you wish. Serves 4–6.

BREAD CRUMBS

These are a regular and very ordinary kitchen requirement, but because we are all out of the habit of using up leftovers, few of us are clear on how to go about making that misnomer, fresh bread crumbs. I say misnomer, because you really want them stale.

I don’t bother with drying out bread in the oven. I just take the crusts off some slices of stale-ish (but not bone dry) good white bread, cut the bread into chunks, and lacerate them into crumbs in the processor. I then leave the crumbs in a shallow bowl or spread them out on a plate to dry and get staler naturally. If you want to make the sort of bread crumbs that you can buy, those very dry, very small crumbs that could coat, say, a
scaloppina Milanese,
then just leave the bread till it’s utterly dried out and cardboardy beyond belief before blitzing it in the processor. You can keep breadcrumbs in a freezer bag in the freezer and use them straight from frozen. I reckon an average slice of good bread, without crusts, weighs about an ounce; this in turn yields approximately 6 tablespoons bread crumbs.

VINAIGRETTE

One of the holdovers of the hostess-trolley age is the idea that the clever cook has a secret vinaigrette recipe that can transform the dullest lettuce into a Sensational Salad. I’m not sure I even have a regular vinaigrette recipe, let alone one with a winning, magic ingredient. But we all panic in the kitchen from time to time, so here is a useful, broad-brush reminder of desirable proportions for various dressings.

PLAIN SALAD DRESSING

I sometimes think the best way of dressing salad is to use just oil and lemon juice. The trick is to use the best possible olive oil—and as little of it as possible—and toss it far longer than you’d believe possible. Use your hands for this. Start off with 1 tablespoon of oil for a whole bowl of lettuce and keep tossing, adding more oil only when you are convinced the leaves need it. When all the leaves are barely covered with the thinnest film of oil, sprinkle over a scant ½ teaspoon sea salt. Toss again. Then squeeze over some lemon juice. Give a final fillip, then taste and adjust as necessary. Instead of lemon juice, you can substitute wine vinegar (and I use red wine vinegar rather than white, generally), but be sparing. Just as the perfect martini, it was always said, was made merely by tilting the vermouth bottle in the direction of the gin, so when making the perfect dressing you should merely point the cork of the vinegar bottle toward the oil.

As important is the composition of the salad itself. Keep it simple: there’s a green salad, which is green; or there’s a red salad, of tomatoes (and maybe onions). First-course salads may be granted a little extra leeway—the addition of something warm and sautéed—but I would never let a tomato find its way into anything leafy. For more detailed explanations (genetic as much as aesthetic) of this prejudice, please see
page 197
. When you’re using those already mixed packets of designer leaves, you should add one crunchy lettuce like romaine, which you buy, radically and separately, as a lettuce and then tear up yourself at the last minute. Herbs—parsley, chives, chervil, lovage—are a good idea in a green salad (and you can add them either to the salad or the dressing) but, except on certain rare occasions, I think garlic is better left out.