Nigella Bites (2 page)

Makes about 15 pancakes if cooked in a blini pan; or if not, about 25 pancakes the size of jam-jar lids.

30g (2 tablespoons) unsalted butter

225g plain flour

2 heaped teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon sugar

pinch of salt

300ml full-fat milk

2 eggs

10 rashers streaky bacon or approx. 100g wafer-thin-cut pancetta

1–2 teaspoons vegetable oil for frying bacon

butter for frying pancakes

best-quality maple syrup

Melt the butter and set aside to cool slightly while you get on with the rest of the batter and the bacon.

In a wide-necked jug, measure out the flour and add the baking powder, sugar and salt. Stir to combine.

In another jug, measure out the milk, beat in the eggs and then the slightly cooled butter, and pour this jug of liquid ingredients into the jug of dry ingredients, whisking as you do so. Or just put everything in a blender and blitz.

In the vegetable oil, fry the bacon (cut into half crosswise) or the pancetta strips until crisp, remove to kitchen towels and cover with more kitchen towels (not because I’m fat-phobic – as if! – but because this will help them keep their requisite crispness). Now, heat either a griddle or non-stick frying pan, smear with a small bit of butter and then start frying. I just pour small amounts straight from the jug (but you could use an American quarter-cup measure if you prefer) so that you have wiggly circumferenced discs of about 4cm in diameter. When you see bubbles erupting on the surface, turn the pancakes over and cook for a couple of minutes, if that, on the other side.

Or just use a blini pan and, as above, turn when the bubbles break through to the uncooked surface. There is a Russian saying to the effect that the first pancake is always botched, so be prepared to sacrifice the initial offering to unceremonious stoveside gobbling.

Pile the pancakes onto plates, wigwam with pieces of crispy bacon or pancetta and dribble or pour over, depending on greed and capacity, that clear, brown, woodily fragrant syrup.

ASIAN-SPICED KEDGEREE

Kedgeree started life, in India, as a dish of lentils and rice and then, translated into the kitchens of what could be called the Anglo-Indian Ascendancy, became an eggy, golden pile of rice punctuated with slabby chunks of smoked haddock. When I was a child it remained as a comforting brunch dish, still part of the homely repertoire of the normal British cook. Here, I’ve fiddled with it some more, replacing the earthier Indian flavours with the sharper ones of Thailand and South-east Asia and trading the strident tones of the smoked haddock for gentle, fleshy salmon, beautifully coral against the turmeric-stained gold of the rice.

Serves 6.

500ml cold water for poaching the fish

2 lime leaves, torn into pieces

4 salmon fillets (approx. 3cm thick), preferably organic, skinned (about 750g in total)

45g unsalted butter

1 teaspoon oil

1 onion, chopped finely

½ teaspoon ground coriander

½ teaspoon ground cumin

½ teaspoon turmeric

225g basmati rice

3 hard-boiled eggs, quartered

3 tablespoons chopped coriander, plus more for sprinkling

juice and zest of a lime plus more lime segments to serve

fish sauce (nam pla) to taste

Preheat the oven to 220°C/gas mark 7. This is because the easiest way to poach the salmon for this is to do it in the oven. So: pour the water into a roasting dish, add the lime leaves and then the salmon. Cover the dish with foil, put in the oven and cook for about 15 minutes, by which time the salmon should be tender. Remove the dish from the oven and drain the liquid off into a jug. Keep the fish warm simply by replacing the foil on the dish.

Melt the butter in a wide, heavy saucepan that has a tight-fitting lid, and add the oil to stop the butter burning. Soften the onion in the pan and add the spices, then keep cooking till the onion is slightly translucent and suffused with the soft perfume of the spices. Add the rice and stir with a wooden spoon so that it’s all well coated. There’s not enough onion to give a heavy coating: just make sure the rice is fragrantly slicked.

Pour in the reserved liquid from the jug – about 500ml – and stir before covering with the lid and cooking gently for about 15 minutes. If your stove is vociferous you may need a heat-diffuser.

At the end of the cooking time, when the rice is tender and has lost all chalkiness, turn off the heat, remove the lid, cover the pan with a tea towel and then replace the lid. This will help absorb any extra moisture from the rice. It is also the best way to let the rice stand without getting claggy or cold, which is useful when you’ve got a few friends and a few dishes to keep your eye on.

Just before you want to eat, drain off any extra liquid that’s collected in the dish with the salmon, then flake the fish with a fork. Add to it the rice, eggs, coriander, lime juice and a drop or two of fish sauce. Stir gently to mix – I use a couple of wooden paddles or spatulas – and taste to see if you want any more lime juice or fish sauce. Sprinkle over the zest from the two juiced halves of the lime and serve. I love it served just as it is in the roasting dish, but if you want to, and I often do (consistency is a requirement of a recipe but not a cook), decant into a large plate before you add the lime zest, then surround with lime segments and add the zest and a small handful of freshly chopped coriander.

This is one of those rare dishes that manages to be comforting and light at the same time. And – should you have leftovers, which I wouldn’t bank on – it’s heavenly eaten, as all leftovers demand to be, standing up, straight from the fridge.

MASALA OMELETTE

Maybe I should come clean here. Although this is a Keralan dish, I have never, in fact, been to Kerala. But the book’s designer had just come back from there when we did the pictures for this book and cooked it for us one day. To eat is to be convinced and the omelette found its way into the TV programme. One of the advantages is that it’s an unusual thing to eat for breakfast but easy to make, and, what’s more, suitable to be cooked for yourself alone. If I’m being honest, I should say that when I cook this for myself, on a weekday at least, I usually dispense with most of the ingredients: I chop two chillies, turn them around in a hot pan with a little bit of oil for a while, then beat them into a couple of eggs, adding some roughly chopped coriander and Maldon salt at the same time. I then pour everything back into the frying pan and cook for a few minutes before sitting the pan under the grill for a top-setting minute or so.

And feel free to add as well as subtract ingredients: grated ginger is good, as is chopped fresh mint or, indeed, dried. You can eat this, flat on the plate, with a knife and fork, or roll it up inside a chapatti that you’ve just warmed through in the microwave. And don’t tell them in Kerala, but I like this with a splodge of brown sauce, too.

Serves 1.

1 teaspoon vegetable oil

1 spring onion, sliced finely

1–2 chillies to taste, red or green

1 clove garlic, Microplaned or finely chopped

¼ teaspoon turmeric

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1 teaspoon ground cumin

2 eggs, beaten

freshly chopped coriander for sprinkling over

chapattis to eat with, if you feel like it

Preheat the grill.

Heat the oil in a non-stick frying pan 20–27cm in diameter, and fry the spring onion, chilli, garlic and turmeric until soft. Add the other spices and fry for another minute, stirring occasionally, then add the beaten eggs, swirling the pan to help the eggs set underneath.

When the omelette is nearly set, flash it under the hot grill to finish it off, and serve with chapattis, and fresh coriander or the Green Coriander Chutney which follows.

GREEN CORIANDER CHUTNEY

This green and fragrant ointment, for all that it’s called a chutney, is perfect, both spiky and, strangely, aromatically cooling with the omelette, to be dolloped on the side of the plate or smeared onto an encircling chapati. I first came across a version of it, some time ago, in Claudia Roden’s wonderful book of Jewish food; it’s rather poetically a dish of the Jews of India. The main bit of fiddling I’ve done is to replace the vinegar she stipulates with lime juice. It is deeply gorgeous and takes a minute or so to make. I keep whatever’s left over in the fridge but the coconut will harden and thicken there; so remember to take it out to get to room temperature before serving it again. You’ll probably need to whizz it up in the processor again adding a little more lime juice as you do so, too.

The creamed coconut comes in butter-sized slabs and lasts for ages, so you can keep some in a cupboard, on standby. But to be frank, I’ve never had any difficulty finding it; I even buy it at my local corner shop.

1–5 green chillies according to taste deseeded and chopped roughly

2½cm piece ginger, peeled and roughly chopped

4 garlic cloves

75g creamed coconut

1 large bunch of coriander approx. 200g

4 sprigs of mint, de-stalked

½ teaspoon salt

pinch of caster sugar

the juice of 3 limes

Put the chillies, ginger, garlic and creamed coconut into a food processor and blitz to a paste. Add the coriander and mint and pulse again until the herbs blend. Add the salt and pinch of sugar then, with the motor running, pour the juice of two and a half limes down the funnel, processing again to mix thoroughly. Taste to see if you want the juice of the remaining half lime.

Put whatever remains into a jar, and keep it in the fridge for up to a month. As I’ve said, it will solidify, but this is easily righted.

BLOODY MARY – A JUGFUL

Bloody Mary is the girl for me. A late-morning breakfast, one that oozes into lunch and then into late afternoon, needs liquid accompaniment, and this is what I’d always choose. I steep dried chilli peppers in a bottle of vodka to use just for Bloody Mary, but you don’t have to be as extravagantly specialist.

A friend of mine who once worked as a barman in Hong Kong introduced me to the trick of adding a little dry sherry to the mix, and I gladly pass it on to you now.

Makes approximately 3 half-pint glasses, so be prepared to replenish.

300ml chilli vodka (or ordinary vodka and a few splashes tabasco)

splash dry sherry

600ml tomato juice, chilled

juice of a quarter to half a lemon (to taste)

few shakes of celery salt

few dashes Worcestershire sauce

good sprinkling of Maldon salt, to taste

celery stick or two

Pour all the ingredients, except for the celery sticks, into a jug and use a stick to stir, then leave it in the jug: Bloody Mary needs a stir before each pouring.

APPLE AND BLACKBERRY KUCHEN

Kuchen may be simply ‘cake’ in German, but what it means in America, taken there by German refugees, is a sweet, but not too sweet, yeasted dough, baked in a slab and topped as desired with fruit, nuts, or both or neither – to be eaten at breakfast or any time with a cup of coffee. This version has a slightly Anglo-taste: apple and blackberry with a buttery crumble topping. It’s unquestionably good as is, but you might consider dolloping over some Greek yoghurt as you eat.

If making yeast dough at breakfast time seems unfathomably demanding, relax in the knowledge that you can make this before you go to bed in the evening, leaving it to rise slowly in the fridge overnight. That way, all you need to do in the morning is preheat the oven, take the dough out of the fridge, let it get to room temperature, then knock it back and press it out over the tin, following on from there.

Serves 8.

for the cake base:

350–400g strong white flour

½ teaspoon salt

50g caster sugar

½ packet easy-blend yeast (about 3g)

2 eggs

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

grated zest of half a lemon

¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon

125ml lukewarm milk

50g butter, softened

30 x 20cm Swiss-roll tin

for the topping:

1 egg beaten with a tablespoon of cream and a pinch of ground cinnamon

1 small or ½ medium Bramley apple (approx. 175g in weight)

375g blackberries

zest of ½ lemon

50g self-raising flour

25g ground almonds

¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon

50g cold unsalted butter, diced

2 tablespoons caster sugar

2 tablespoons demerara sugar

25g flaked almonds

Put 350g of the flour in a bowl with the salt, sugar and easy-blend yeast. In another bowl, beat the eggs and add them, with the vanilla extract, lemon zest and cinnamon, to the lukewarm milk. Stir the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients to make a medium-soft dough, being prepared to add more flour as necessary. I generally use about 400g in all, but advise you to start off with the smaller amount: just add more as needed. Work in the soft butter and knead by hand for about 10 minutes or half that time by machine. When the dough is ready it will appear smoother and springier. It suddenly seems to plump up into glossy life.

Cover with a tea towel and leave till doubled in size (an hour to an hour and a quarter). Or leave to rise slowly in a cold place overnight. Then punch down and press to line a Swiss-roll tin measuring 30 x 20cm. You may think it’s never going to stretch to fill, but it will, although you may need to let it rest for 10 minutes or so mid-stretch, especially if the dough has had a cold rise. When it’s pressed out on the tin, leave it to prove for 15–20 minutes then brush with the egg and cream mixture.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 200°C/gas mark 6. Peel and chop the apple and toss it in a bowl with the blackberries and the zest from the other half lemon. Set aside in the bowl for the few minutes it takes to make the crumble topping. Put the flour, ground almonds and cinnamon in a medium-sized bowl, stir to combine, then add the cold, diced butter. Using the tips of your fingers – index and middle stroking the fleshy pads of your thumbs – rub it into the flour. Stop when you have a mixture that resembles clumpy (this is a very buttery mixture) porridge oats. Fork in the sugars and flaked almonds.