The Digested Twenty-first Century (33 page)

The perfect cup of coffee

•   Ask for unlisted Arabica blend, but remember that the Indonesian, Kopi Luwak bean is considered distinctly nouveau riche.

•   Shout loudly at South African waiter to check water was heated to between 97–98°C before being poured on to ground coffee.

Cereals were invented in America to promote colonic health and, as I reluctantly swallow a mouthful of muesli, I feel the onset of a bowel movement. I walk to the loo, casually noticing the checkmate in 17 moves for the person playing black as I pass the idiosyncratically placed chessboard. The lavatory attendant unfastens my trousers and polishes the bowl as I enter the stall. A self-satisfying movement follows and I look down at my perfectly formed excrement. And wonder just who on earth will buy it?

Digested read, digested:
Completely pointless. Just like the author.

I’ll be honest. I never thought I’d write a Christmas book. But then my publisher called to gossip about the credit crunch. ‘What’s that got to do with me?’ I yawned, stretching out on my chaise longue.

‘Nothing, sweetie,’ she said. ‘It’s us here at Chatto I’m worried about. We’re desperate for a Christmas bestseller to help us make budget and we wondered if you could help us out.’

What is Christmas, I thought, if not an opportunity to help out one’s friends? And it would take care of that extension to the extension Charles and I had been promising ourselves. So maybe the Domestic Goddess would do a quick turn as the Domestic Druidess after all!

‘OK, darling, you’ve twisted my arm,’ I cooed. ‘But there are a few ground rules. My Christmas isn’t some kind of austerity family hold-back affair. I want to be able to forget the sad, grey little faces of all my neighbours who have lost their jobs at Lehman Brothers and luxuriate in guilt-free greed and over-indulgence.’

‘That’s perfect, Gelly Baby,’ she laughed. ‘Just the kind of pointless consumerism Christmas publishing is all about. Getting people to buy expensive crap that never gets read.’

So where to start? How about with a feeble pun about how we always call Prosecco ‘Prozacco’ at casa mia? Bubbles on their own can be crashingly dull, so how about livening them up with a bottle of Grand Marnier and some pomegranate? And now we’ve got into the party mood and the camera filter has been set to the softest of focuses, let’s get cooking!

I’m far too clumsy to be the canapé queen. But if you nip down to your nearest over-priced deli – I recommend the gorgeous Marco in Holland Park – you’re sure to find something you can pass off as your own. To make it look festive, try decorating it with a Christmas theme. Any small objets de tat will do; Charles tells me that Chinese is in this year and you’re welcome to call him if you’ve got a spare mill for a plastic giant panda.

You might be wondering what the ‘welcome table’ is. It’s a term I made up for the table in the hall that’s laden with whole pigs and cold swans for all those guests who arrive feeling a little
peckish and aren’t sure if they can make it to the dining-room without dying of starvation. Anything can go here, provided it’s got enough kick to give you a heart attack.

I haven’t given a proper dinner party for years, but at Christmas the Baudelairian yearning for home is at its strongest and we like to have 60 of our closest friends round for sups in the nursery. Catering is a challenge but I always find it best to recycle some of my recipes from previous books and hope no one notices.

For the main event you need to get your staff cooking several days in advance to prepare the stuffings and marinades for the turkey. All cooking instructions are based on the assumption you have a double oven. If you don’t, be prepared to have a shitty meal at 10pm! Be generous with quantities; allow at least 27 chipolatas per child.

At 5pm, everyone will be desperate for tea and you don’t want to be caught looking like some kind of Scrooge. This is when you should push the boat out. Here’s my recipe for my all-time favourite, The Angel of the North cake:

1.   Commission Antony Gormley to make you a special cake tin.

2.   Take three tonnes of flour, two tonnes of sugar and 11,765 eggs and cook at gas mark 5 for 35 minutes.

3.   Get your husband to buy it for his gallery.

And that’s about it. Oh, they want me to write a little more. How about something on how I once made 96 Christmas cupcakes for the school PTA just to show off. No? Then how about making your own food to give as presents? Just buy some Sharwood’s mango chutney, put it in a different jar, sprinkle with gold dust and holly and you’re done. But don’t try that on me, babes! You know where Tiffany is!

Digested read, digested:
Nigella’s Christmas turkey.

A plateful of milk skin with grass, flowers and herbs. Something most of you would go a long way to avoid. Especially at £27.50. But this was not any milk skin, it was René Redzepi milk skin. Redzepi is the genius who has wrested Nordic cuisine away from the Mediterranean influences of El Bulli and Pizza Express to reclaim the soul of Kierkegaard. He understands that a potato cannot be separated from the soil in which it is grown; that is why at Noma the chips are covered in dirt and served in a jus de earthworm.

The reviews were polite but not much more when Noma first opened for business in Copenhagen in 2003 and Redzepi realised he had to rethink his gastronomic concept. The only way to return to the purest essence of boiled cabbage was by going on a Nordic tour to source some of the most inedible foods imaginable. Within a matter of years Noma had been voted the best restaurant in the world. Here are some excerpts from René’s diary of that momentous journey.

Mandag
Kristan greets us at Torshaven airport in the Faroe Islands with some sea-buckthorn berries. Wow! They are utterly disgusting. We must use them. They will go well with raw puffin and turnips.

Lordag
Edda takes us to Iceland’s lava landscape to steam vegetables in the hot springs. The sulphurous smell is overpowering, but I think I will be able to replicate it in the Noma kitchens.

Tirsdag
Vigdis serves fresh whale. The meat has a strong taste of iron, but I can reduce that by taking out the harpoon.

Onsdag
Sverrir takes us out among the Greenland ice floes. The scallops caught at 35 metres are not good. I suggest we try somewhere deeper. We send a diver down to the seabed at 1,200 metres. He dies of the bends on the way up, but it is worth it. The flavour is exquisite. I place an order for several tonnes a year; Sverrir places an order for several hundred divers.

Bouillon of Steamed Birchwood, Chanterelles and Fresh Hazelnut
Chop down one 12 metre birch tree and soak in an ice bath to lock in the flavours. Then boil for seven days until it is soggy. Macerate the remaining branches and boil for a further 10 days. Force the pulp through a fine sieve, then reduce the liquid until just 50ml remain. Add some chanterelles and garnish with a hazelnut.

Reindeer with Celeriac and Wild Herb Gel
Shoot reindeer in back yard. Slice 200g of meat from the shoulder and the loin and preserve the hide. Vacuum-pack the shoulder and cook for three hours at 84°C. Poke it and cook for a further three hours at 87°C. Blend the loin with celeriac very quickly (no longer than 3.7 seconds) then put in thermomixer and add to the shoulder and poach for 14 minutes at 68°C. Boil up the reindeer hooves and wild herbs into a glue and stick the hide back on.

Sea Urchins and Frozen Milk, Cucumber and Dill
Remove sea urchins from hyperbaric chamber and get junior member of staff to cut off spines so you don’t spike yourself. Poach the spines for seven hours in a water bath at 37°C then throw away. Rinse the orange urchin tongues before adding seven grains of Norwegian sand. Incinerate the cucumber until carbonised then crush into a powder. Separate the cream from the milk for 11 minutes before mixing
them back together and freezing with liquid nitrogen. Mix everything together and blow-torch.

Snails and Moss
Feed 32 snails on beetroot until they turn red. Boil them alive, making sure none escape. Scrape some moss from the side of a fjord and blanch until colourless. Then reform snails and moss into the Danish flag.

Blueberries surrounded by their Natural Environment
Remove several large blueberry bushes from the garden, taking care to preserve as much of the root ball as possible. Reattach any blueberries that fell off while you were moving the plant with maltodextrin and xanthum gum. Bring Arctic foxes into kitchen and palpate their bladders until they have urinated on the blueberries. Repot the bushes in Greenland tundra and serve with vanilla Häagen-Dazs ice-cream.

Digested read, digested:
Nochance.

This book is dedicated to the Wigmore-Reynolds, the Van Nices, the Turly-Burnses, the McCartney-Willises, the Nadal-Saxe-Coburgs, the Cameron-Cleggs and all the other little people with whom I have shared so many wonderful meals. But the biggest thank you goes to the trees who gave me their permission to be pulped.

I literally could not have written this book without the literal assistance of Julia Turshen who literally did all the cooking and
writing while I literally did yoga classes and literally had my hair done for the photo-shoot.

‘Why,’ you may ask, ‘would the world’s greatest actress wish to share her kitchen secrets?’ It is because I have the secret of eternal life. When my beloved father, who taught me so much about cooking, was diagnosed with cancer in 1998, I became convinced I could cure him with a macrobiotic diet. Sadly he died, but only because he had eaten too much steak and chips when he was young. But with these recipes my children and possibly your children, if they have double-barrelled surnames, can live for ever, and if you think I’m going to mention my idiot husband Chris and his rubbish band then you’ve got another think coming – he’s never supported my ambition to be hailed as the new lifestyle goddess of those with too much time on their hands.

How to use this book
Get a member of your staff to read it out loud while you are having a pedicure. If a recipe sounds tasty, ask him to cook it. If some ingredients are unavailable, call my favourite gourmet organic deli in Bel Air and have them flown over.

Vegetarian chilli
When my daughter, Apple, was six months old she informed me she was a vegetarian. This is a recipe she has come to love. It’s really very easy. Feel the pain of the carrots as you dice them and fry gently. Add some beans until you have a sludge. Serve with rice. (NB: I only use wholegrain rice grown near the Tibet border. This takes four hours to cook, which is why I like to involve my children in the kitchen experience. Apple likes nothing more than staring at a saucepan while I nip out to phone Sting and Trudie.)

Bitter leaf salad
Few things are as good for your liver as bitter greens – they support its detoxification. When it’s cold and you feel
like a hearty meal, there’s nothing better than a puntarelle or escarole head. Go easy on the anchovy vinaigrette, or you could bloat.

Stick insect pancakes
After meditating with some of LA’s most profound mystics, I have come to realise that you are what you eat. If you eat pork, you will look like a pig. If you eat stick insects . . . just look at me. Place stick insects in cold water, then bring to boil while praying for their immortal souls. Add to pancake mix. Do not, under any circumstances, serve with sugar.

Asian portobello burgers
I’ve come to realise that meals are a very special time when families come together. Ours is no exception, so my people have created a special app so that I can talk to Apple and Moses if I am in the gym when they are having lunch. As an American I have burgers in my DNA and there’s nothing quite like the thrill of telling kids you are cooking them burgers, then seeing the disappointment on their little faces when you serve them up a mushroom!

Duck ragu
One year Jamie Oliver came round to cook me lunch on my birthday. I expect he does that for you, too. He cooked this amazing duck pasta and I have literally spent the last 250 years trying to perfect it. Get a surgeon to give another duck at the Malibu Center for Desperately Sick Mallards a chance of life by transplanting the heart of the duck you are going to eat. Roast duck for two hours, then discard all fat. Not that I have any. Serve with spaghetti.

Apple crumble
Slice one Apple into quarters and sprinkle with a light crumble. Put in oven. (NB: Not suitable for vegetarians).

Digested read, digested:
Thank you, thank you for . . . indulging me.

I first saw this garden on a dank autumnal day in 1991. It was piled high with rubble and weeds, and there was nothing to suggest that one day it would be filled with lustily growing plants, or that two million women from the shires would tune in to
Gardeners’ World
each Friday to swoon at me running my fingers, scored with decades of Herefordshire loam, through my tangled, wayward curls.

Every year, I have an almost tangible sense of renewal in January. I can feel the light seeping back into the Jewel Garden as the snowdrops emerge and the days stretch out, longer minute by minute. But generally speaking, there’s sod all going on, so I’ll fill up the chapter with some stuff about cavolo nero and leeks.

February is my favourite month of the year and, if I listen carefully when I wake, I can hear the faint chattering of birds that heralds the first sounds of spring. On some days, I even like to sit outside and lean against a tree moodily while my photograph is taken. But beware! February can still be very cold, and it’s vital to keep your tenderest plants well-wrapped in their fleeces. Otherwise, there’s still next to nothing going on, but I can do a bit of digging if I’m bored.