How to Eat (52 page)

Pour and spread over the pastry-lined pan and bake for about 15 minutes, until golden brown. Lower the heat to 350°F and cook for a further 15–20 minutes, until nicely colored.

As with most desserts, it is best to time this to come out of the oven not long before you’re sitting down; it will be warm but will have had time to settle. But this, as Jane Grigson says, is wonderful whether hot, warm, or cold.

FRANCO-AMERICAN LUNCH FOR 6

GIGOT BOULANGÈRE

SLICED GREEN BEANS OR GREEN SALAD

SUMMER SLUMP

I’ve mentioned that I like lamb as cooked by the French, and a gigot boulangère is particularly glorious, both dignified and comforting.

After the garlicky lamb, do something simple. If you want it to be a “made” dessert rather than plain fruit or ice cream, then I’d go for a slump, which is a fabulous, homey dessert (as is grunt, which has a synonymous application) of fruit baked with little dumplings on top. This is easy and suits late summer, when fruit’s around, though you can use frozen.

GIGOT BOULANGèRE

Shoulder, not leg, of lamb baked over potatoes is probably the origin of this dish; the shoulder would have been boned and so, really, should the leg. But don’t worry about it, nor about making this historically authentic. We no longer take the roasting pan or casserole over to the baker’s to cook in his oven (hence the name), so we can liberate ourselves from the other connotations of the dish without going into a frenzy of culinary self-doubt. Elizabeth David specifies new potatoes to go underneath the roast, and feel free to do likewise. The French certainly eat waxier potatoes than we do. I specify floury potatoes simply because that’s the way I have always eaten this.

1 whole bone-in leg of lamb, about 7 pounds, hip bone removed (have your butcher do this)

3 garlic cloves, peeled, slivered lengthwise, and the slivers halved

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, plus more for greasing the pan, softened

3 bay leaves

2–3 shallots, halved, or 1 large onion, quartered

6 or 7 sprigs fresh thyme or 1 teaspoon dried

3½ pounds floury potatoes

salt and freshly milled black pepper

1 cup lamb stock or water

Preheat the oven to 400°F.

Stab the lamb in several places with the point of a sharp knife and insert the garlic slivers. Cut a quarter of the butter off and put it to one side.

Crumble the bay leaves and put them and the shallots in a food processor. Reserving a couple of sprigs, hold the rest of the thyme over the bowl and, squeezing each stem by turn, pull downwards so that the leaves fall into the bowl. Pulse until everything is chopped finely. Naturally, you can do this by hand if you prefer.

Butter a deep roasting pan large enough to take all the potatoes and the lamb; an ordinary high-sided one will do, and indeed is what I use. Peel the potatoes and slice them thinly but not transparently so, blanch them for 2–3 minutes in boiling salted water; drain, dry, and layer them on the bottom of the dish, dotting with the larger quantity of butter and seasoning with the salt, pepper, and the onion mixture as you go.

Pour the stock over the potatoes, put in the oven, and bake for 30 minutes before adding the lamb.

Rub the top of the lamb with the rest of the butter and the leaves from the remaining sprigs of thyme. Sit the lamb on top of the potatoes and roast for 1 hour, then raise the heat to 450°F and cook for another 30 minutes or to an internal temperature of 130°F. This should give you pink but not underdone meat, but test after about 1¼ hours to see if it’s how you like it.

Let the meat rest in the turned-off oven with the door open for about 15 minutes before serving. Even though it doesn’t look as lovely, remove the lamb to a board to carve it. You can always put the slices back on top of the potatoes in the pan before you serve it.

SUMMER SLUMP

Note that the fruit layer in this is quite liquid—most like a fruit soup. If you haven’t got fresh fruit to make it, use frozen red berries (not strawberries) and avoid framboise or a fraise liqueur. Make the dough for the dumplings ahead, if you like, and hold it in the fridge.

To make enough slump for 6, then (though it would stretch to 8—it’s just that I hate stretching), you need:

FOR THE FRUIT

2¼ pounds fruits, such as raspberries, blackberries, cherries (stoned), or blueberries, any combination, fresh or frozen

½ cup sugar, plus more, if needed

4–5 tablespoons water or suitable liqueur, such as crème de cassis or an orange liqueur

FOR THE DUMPLINGS

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

pinch salt

2 tablespoons superfine sugar

2 tablespoons ground almonds

6 tablespoons (¾ stick) unsalted butter, chilled and cut into small dice

milk to bind

Preheat the oven to 375°F. Put the fruit in a baking dish—I use one of those oval old-fashioned cream stoneware bowls, but any pie or baking dish that has a capacity of about 10 cups should do. Sprinkle the fruit with the sugar; taste and add more if you think it’s needed. Add the water or suitable liqueur and put, covered (with lid or foil), in the oven.

Meanwhile, get on with the dumplings. Sift the flour and baking powder into a bowl, add the salt, the sugar, and the almonds (almond dumplings are not usual, but I prefer them here). Stir them together and then throw in the butter and rub into the dry ingredients until the mixture is crumbly. You could do this in a free-standing electric mixer, but I wouldn’t try a processor.

Pour in enough milk—about 2 tablespoons—to bind the dough; it should be soft but not too sticky to form into balls the size of small walnuts (remember, they will swell while cooking and then they should grow up into the size of proper walnuts). This quantity of dough should make about 24 little dumplings. Take the fruit out of the oven when it’s simmering—15–35 minutes, depending on whether the fruit is fresh or frozen. Take off the lid, stir the fruit, and taste for sweetness, adding more sugar if necessary. Put the dumplings in the dish, cover again, and bake for another 15–20 minutes, by which time the dumplings should be cooked, beautifully swollen and no longer doughy. I like this with ice cream, but cream, old-fashioned runny cream rather than those stiff restauranty mounds, can be just right, too.

BLACK-BERRIES AND CREAM

If you want something plainer, or rather even less trouble, just get masses of blackberries, cover a vast plate with them, and do nothing save sprinkle them with superfine sugar. Pour a great deal of heavy cream into a pitcher and put it on the table alongside.

This was never going to be a comprehensive list of suggestions, but I am loath to move on without mentioning one more traditional—and this time British traditional—way with lamb, and that’s with caper sauce.

Caper sauce in fact goes, or always went, with boiled leg of mutton. But no one eats mutton any more. It’s extravagant to boil lamb. It would be awful, though, if caper sauce disappeared, so just make it to go with plain roast lamb instead.

The best way to get some lamb stock to flavor the caper sauce is to roast lamb for 15 minutes in a very high oven, turn it down to 400°F, and add about 2 cups of water and an onion, halved, to the dish. I’ve got one of those roasters that is made of a punctured dish over a deeper pan and I put the lamb on the rack and the water and onion in the pan below. Don’t cover the lamb; you want the top to crisp. (For cooking times, check table on
page xviii
.) Otherwise just buy a tub of chicken stock for the sauce.

For a richer sauce, stir in, at the end, an egg yolk beaten gently with about 5 tablespoons heavy cream.

CAPER SAUCE FOR ROAST LAMB

Make this sauce while the lamb is resting prior to carving. If you’ve braise-roasted the lamb as mooted above, try to remove as much fat as you can from the roasting pan. I am hopeless at it, so what I suggest is that you pour the juices into a measuring cup and mop the top, where the fat is, with some paper towels. If you find those gravy dividers effective, use one of them, but I find that they’re made so big that the top of the liquid—let alone the unfatty part below—never even reaches the spout. Pour about 1 cup of the juices into the milk required and warm.

4 tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter

½ cup all-purpose flour

1 2/3 cups milk

1 cup lamb or chicken stock

3 tablespoons capers plus 1 teaspoon vinegar, or more, from the jar

1 tablespoon chopped parsley (optional)

salt, if needed

freshly milled black pepper

Using the butter and flour, make the roux for the sauce (following the recipe for béchamel on page 19), pour in the milk and lamb stock as normal, and cook until thick. Stir in the capers (adding more if you want it more capery) and the 1 teaspoon of vinegar from the caper bottle. Taste and add more vinegar if you think it’s needed. I like this fairly sharp and might well add another teaspoon of caper juice, but proceed cautiously. If using, add the parsley. Season, if needed, with salt and do not be reticent with the pepper.

To be frank, although it’s hardly traditional, I love caper sauce with roast pork, too. Its sour-noted velvetiness goes wonderfully with the densely woven sweetness of the meat. More often, though, I go for onion (or leek) sauce, but habit plays a large part in the lunch repertoire, I do see.

For regular, ordinary weekend roast pork I get a fresh ham; ask the butcher for boneless knuckle-half, a 6–8-pound cut. Roast it at 425°F for 1 hour and then turn it down to 325°F. To work out the total cooking time, think along the lines of 22–25 minutes per pound plus 25 minutes, or cook to an internal temperature of 160°F.

If you’re going to do just plain fresh ham, then follow the instructions for roast potatoes given with the roast beef (
page 253
) and work a timetable out for yourself. At least you’re not bothering with the Yorkshire pudding, so there are fewer major factors to take into consideration. With this I love sliced green beans and cabbage—huge bowlfuls with butter and black pepper or, as my mother often made it, with caraway seeds. The only time I like red cabbage is with pork, too, so I’ll give a recipe for that while I’m about it.

SWEETLY NOSTALGIC LUNCH FOR 6

ROAST FRESH HAM

ROAST POTATOES

RED CABBAGE COOKED IN THE VIENNESE FASHION

STEM-GINGER GINGERBREAD WITH SHARP CHEESE, OR APPLE BUTTERSCOTCH TART

ROAST FRESH HAM

If at all possible, get your ham with its skin, and roast according to the method above. And, to make sure the skin becomes a true crackling and not damp, chewy rind, make sure you don’t cover the ham while it’s in the fridge (plastic film will give it a very sloppy kiss of death). Score it with a sharp knife before roasting. I do it the easy way: I ask the butcher to score it; his knives are better than mine, for a start. Besides, the purpose of going to a good butcher is to make sure the meat is beautifully handled, cut, and prepared as well as fresh and well chosen.

If you’re stuck with scoring the skin yourself, then take a sharp knife and cut lines on the diagonal at about 1-inch intervals. If you want, you can then do the same the other way, so you have a diamond pattern etched into the rind. But that’s not necessary, and it is easier not to.

I like to rub English mustard powder onto the scored, wiped skin, or the surface fat if the ham is rindless (give it a quick go-over with some paper towel just to make sure it’s really dry). Or you can sprinkle on salt. Some people dribble vinegar on, but I am not convinced.

A tip from my butcher, David Lidgate: to make sure the crackling is properly crunchy all over, when you take the ham out of the oven, quickly peel off the crackling, cut it into 2 or 3 pieces, and put it in a hot tray and back into the oven, turning it back up to 425°F as you do so. Start carving and when you’re done, take out the crackling, break it into more pieces, and put it on a plate in the middle of the table for people to take as they like. The pieces of crackling that come from the nether parts of the leg will obviously be damper and take longer to crisp than those from the top part, so don’t take all the crackling out of the oven at the same time.

My mother loved red cabbage, so I am fond of this dish. On the whole, I don’t like savory food that’s fruity and jammy, but in the right weather and in the right mood, it can be fabulous, aromatic, and warming, and with just enough edge to stop it from cloying. I prefer it with roast pork rather than the more usual goose or duck. I think it actually benefits from being eaten with a meat that offers light to its shade. I love it with sausages, too. And it works beautifully with just-fried, still-moussy calf’s liver.

The advantage of fruity stewed red cabbage is that it can be made in advance and moreover is the better for it. This recipe comes from a lovely book, Arabella Boxer’s
Garden Cookbook
, which I picked up at a dusty second-hand bookshop. This book came out in the mid-1970s, so it is exactly contemporaneous with my memories of the red cabbage my mother used to cook. I seem to remember, though, my mother always used brown sugar, and a rich molasses-y one at that. And I had no idea that the culinary style this invoked was Viennese, but I rather love the idea—it certainly adds charm.