Is There a Nutmeg in the House? (10 page)

The salad must be fresh and crisp. Wash and dry it well ahead

of time. With it in the bowl mix the Gruyère or Emmenthal (the latter is the one with the large holes, whereas the real Gruyère has very small ones) cut into tiny cubes. Add the dressing, made from 6 tablespoonsful of olive oil to a teaspoonful or two at most of vinegar, at the last minute.

Instead of olive oil, the light walnut oil of Touraine can be used for the dressing. Combined with the cheese it makes a beautiful and interesting mixture.

Dried Herbs, Aromatics and Condiments
, 1967

Garlic Presses are Utterly Useless

According to the British restaurant guides, dining at John Tovey’s Miller Howe Hotel on Lake Windermere is an experience akin to sitting through the whole Ring cycle in one session. Perhaps, but in Tovey’s latest book,
Feast of Vegetables
, there is little sign of excess or eccentricity. His recipes are basically conventional, the novelty, and it is a useful one, lying in the seasonings. Carrots may be spiced with coriander or caraway seed, or green ginger. Orange juice and rind go into grated beetroot. Marsala and toasted almond flakes give courgettes a new look and a new taste. Chicory or Belgian endives are braised in orange juice, the grated peel added. A celeriac soup is again flavoured with orange juice and the grated rind. A celeriac, courgette and potato mixture is cooked in a frying pan into a flat cake – a useful recipe for non-meat eaters. Another in the same category is for individual moulds of cooked carrots and turnips, whizzed to a purée with hazelnuts, egg yolks, cream and seasonings of onion salt (something I can myself at all times do without) and ground ginger. Whisked egg whites are folded in, the mixture is transferred to buttered ramekins lined with lettuce leaves, baked in a water bath in a hottish oven, and turned out for serving. All oven temperatures are given in Fahrenheit, centigrade and gas marks, and timing is always carefully worked out, in many cases with three alternatives, according to whether you want your vegetables crisp – Mr Tovey steers clear of the idiotic term crispy – firm or soft.

It is when we get to the subject of garlic that I really warm to Mr Tovey. What he has to say about its preparation is alone
worth the price of his book. The passage should be reproduced in large type, framed and sold in gift shops for the enlightenment of gadget-minded cooks the length and breadth of the land. In the manner of those pious thoughts which once adorned the walls of cottage parlours, proclaiming that God is Love, or Drink is the Pick-me-up which lets you Down, Mr Tovey’s text is concise and to the point. Readers, heed him
please
: ‘I give full marks to the purveyors of garlic presses for being utterly useless objects.’

I’d go further than that. I regard garlic presses as both ridiculous and pathetic, their effect being precisely the reverse of what people who buy them believe will be the case. Squeezing the juice out of garlic doesn’t reduce its potency, it concentrates it and intensifies the smell. I have often wondered how it is that people who have once used one of these diabolical instruments don’t notice this and forthwith throw the thing into the dustbin. Perhaps they do but won’t admit it.

Now here’s John Tovey again. The consistency you’re looking for when adding garlic to a dish is ‘mushy and paste-like’. Agreed. It is quickly achieved by crushing a peeled clove lightly with the back edge of a really heavy knife blade. Press a scrap of salt into the squashed garlic. That’s all. Quicker, surely than getting the garlic press out of the drawer, let alone using it and cleaning it. As a one-time kitchen-shop owner who in the past has frequently, and usually vainly, attempted to dissuade a customer from buying a garlic press, I am of course aware that advice not to buy a gadget which someone has resolved to waste their money on is usually resented as bossy, ignorant, and interfering. At least now I am not alone.

Now a word of dissent. If there’s one thing about expensive restaurant cooking which to my mind spoils vegetable soups, it’s the often unnecessary and undesirable use of chicken or meat-based stock as a foundation. John Tovey uses just one basic chicken or turkey and vegetable stock for every one of his soups, from asparagus, courgette, fennel, Jerusalem artichoke, to parsnip, sweetcorn, tomato, turnip. I suppose that passes in a hotel restaurant where you’re feeding different people every day, but in household cooking such a practice soon results in deathly monotony. That’s one, just one, of the reasons stock cubes are so awful. They give the same underlying false flavour to every soup. It can’t be sufficiently emphasised that many vegetable soups are best without any stock at all. It’s not a question of lazy cooking.
Donkeys years ago I learned from Boulestin not to diminish and distort the indefinably strange and alluring flavour of Jerusalem artichoke purée with stock. A year or two ago, when Raymond Blanc was still at the Quat’ Saisons in Oxford, I had there a creamy pumpkin soup which I’d be happy to eat every other day. He told me he used a very light vegetable stock as a base for his delectable creation. The information seems worth passing on.

Tatler
, February 1986

Tians

Among the very simplest and easiest of summer dishes are those mixtures of vegetables and eggs baked in an open earthenware casserole or gratin dish called in the Provençal language a
tian
. From the earthenware tian, the dish itself takes its name. Not that there is any one specific formula for a tian; there are as many variations as there are of a salade niçoise, the idea being that you use a certain proportion of freshly cooked green vegetables – spinach, spinach beet or chard (the kind the French call
blettes
) – bulking them out, if you like, with potatoes or rice and mixing them all up with eggs beaten as for an omelette. The proportions depend to a certain extent upon what you have available, the size of your dish, the number of people you have to feed. Seasonings and extra flavourings may be onions, garlic, anchovies, capers. Grated cheese – usually Gruyère, Parmesan or Dutch – and plenty of chopped parsley and other fresh green herbs are fairly constant ingredients. Sometimes a richly aromatic tomato sauce goes into the mixture. A
tian
, as you see, is a wonderfully flexible dish, not the least of its beauties being that it is equally good hot or cold; it is indeed a traditional picnic dish of the country people around Arles, Avignon and Aix-en-Provence. Every family has a different recipe. Some are just simple mixtures of vegetables and cheese with a top layer of breadcrumbs and without any eggs at all, although these I think are best eaten hot. My own favourites are made with courgettes, potatoes and eggs, or with spinach, potatoes and eggs.

TIAN
OF COURGETTES

250 g (8 oz) of courgettes, 250–3 50 g (8–12 oz) potatoes boiled in their skins, 2 heaped tablespoons each of parsley and grated cheese, a few spinach or sorrel leaves if you happen to have them, a small clove of garlic, seasonings of salt, nutmeg and freshly milled black pepper, 5 or 6 eggs, approximately 4 tablespoons of olive oil.

For these quantities you need an earthenware dish of 20 cm diameter and 5 cm deep (8 in × 2 in). A
tian
made with the quantities given should be enough for 4–6 people.

First peel the cooked potatoes. Cut them into cubes, put them into the earthenware dish with 2 tablespoons of olive oil, the chopped garlic and seasonings of salt and pepper. Let them warm in the uncovered dish in a low oven, 150°C/300°F/gas mark 2, while you prepare and cook the courgettes. The best way to do this is simply to wash them, trim off the ends, and leave them unpeeled except for any blemished parts. Instead of slicing them, grate them coarsely on a stainless steel grater. Put them straight into a sauté pan or wide frying pan with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil (or butter if you prefer), sprinkle them with salt, cook them gently for 5 minutes, with a cover on the pan.

Now break the eggs into a large bowl. Beat them until frothy. Add the chopped parsley and any other fresh greenery you may have – this could include watercress and lettuce as well as spinach or sorrel, uncooked and simply cut up with scissors – the cheese, salt, pepper, nutmeg, then the warm courgettes. Last of all, but gently to avoid breaking them, stir in the potatoes. Tip the whole mixture into the dish, sprinkle the top with a little oil, return it, uncovered, to the oven, now heated to 190°C/375°F/gas mark 5.

Leave the
tian
to bake for 25–30 minutes until it is well and evenly risen. The top should be a fine and appetising golden-brown. For serving hot, leave it in the dish, and simply cut it into wedges, like a cake. If you intend to serve it cold, leave it to cool before turning it out on to a serving plate. If it is for a picnic leave it in the cooking dish, put a plate on top and envelop it in a cloth knotted at the top.

Although the
tian
is a rather rough and ready dish, it is not without certain subtleties of texture and taste. And when you cut into it, it is beautiful, marbled with the green herbs, the squares of white potato, the yellow eggs. Typically Mediterranean, it is another among those many admirable inventions for which we
have to thank generations of peasant farmers and cooks making the best of the resources provided by their own kitchen gardens and farmyards.

Notes

When mixing the
tian
ingredients, it’s preferable that the vegetables be hot when they are mixed with the beaten eggs, and it is important that as soon as the mixture is ready it be poured into the cooking dish and transferred immediately to the oven. If it is kept waiting in the dish, the eggs tend to rise to the top, so you get a dish in two layers, instead of one integrated and nicely-marbled cake.

TIAN
WITH TOMATOES AND COURGETTES
^*

For this variation the prepared courgettes are mixed with a thickish and well-seasoned sauce made from 500 g (1 lb) of skinned and chopped tomatoes (or half and half fresh and tinned) cooked in olive oil with a clove or two of garlic, onions if you like, and a flavouring of wild marjoram (oregano) or, for a change, tarragon.

Simmer the sauce until it is well reduced, amalgamate it with the cooked courgettes, then mix both with the beaten eggs, cheese and parsley, and cook as above.

This
tian
, with the red-gold of the tomato, and the green of the courgettes, is just as handsome as the first one.

TIAN
WITH SPINACH AND POTATOES

Wash 500 g (1 lb) of fresh spinach, cook it very briefly in just the water clinging to the leaves. Season with a little salt. Drain and squeeze dry. Chop it roughly, adding a little garlic if you like, and half a dozen anchovy fillets torn into short lengths. Stir this mixture into the beaten eggs and cheese, then add the cubed potatoes, and cook the
tian
as before. If you can lay hands on a few pine nuts, they make a delicious and characteristic addition to this
tian
. An alternative to the potatoes is cooked rice. Allow about 100 g (3½ oz), uncooked weight, for this size of
tian
.

GRATIN OF RICE AND COURGETTES

This is a rather different dish, more delicate and milder than any of the
tian
tribe.

For 4 people allow 500 g (1 lb) of courgettes, 100 g (31½ oz) of butter, 2 tablespoons of flour, ½ litre (18 fl oz) of milk, 3 tablespoons of Parmesan or Gruyère, 4 tablespoons of fine quality rice, seasonings of salt, pepper and nutmeg. A little extra butter for finishing the dish.

Prepare, grate, and cook the courgettes as described in the first
tian
recipe, but using half the butter instead of olive oil. (This is a wonderful way of cooking courgettes to serve as a vegetable on its own – but you need a large pan.)

With the remaining butter, the flour and warmed milk make a béchamel sauce. Season it well, not forgetting a little nutmeg. When it is well cooked and smooth, stir in the courgettes.

Cook the rice in boiling salted water, keeping it on the firm side.

Have ready a lightly buttered gratin dish, approximately 20 cm × 5 cm (8 in × 2 in), combine the courgette-béchamel mixture with the rice, put it all into the dish and smooth it down, lightly. On top sprinkle the Parmesan, and a little butter in tiny knobs.

Put the dish near the top of a moderate oven, 170°C/325°F/gas mark 3 and let it cook for 15–20 minutes, or 30 if the whole mixture has been heated up from cold. The top should be lightly golden and bubbly.

The first time I ever had this gratin of courgettes was at lunch in a village inn at Rians near Aix-en-Provence. It was twenty years ago and I can still remember our meal. First came a typical Provençal hors d’oeuvre – pâté, tomato salad, olives, a few slices of salami – then the courgette dish, quite on its own, followed by a daube of beef served sizzling hot in a casserole brought to the table and left on it so that we could help ourselves. Then, as an alternative to the fruit, or ice cream, one would expect at the end of such a meal we were offered little bowls of a most delicious jam, home-made from green melons. There was, by the way, no vegetable of any kind with the beef stew. We had good bread with which to mop up the juices, and that was enough.