Salt in bread dough

I bake all the bread we eat in this house, and yet it's still a little hit or miss. So I signed up as a recipe tester for Peter Reinhart's forthcoming book on artisan baking. I'm right in the middle of the first test - obviously, I can't give you the recipe. Straight away, I'm thinking harder about exactly what I'm doing, and that's because I'm (for once) doing exactly what the recipe says.

It's one of those slow-ferment recipes, the sort you barely have to knead, the sort you can keep in the fridge for more or less instant bread all week. But when I found myself putting in about twice my normal quantity of salt, I started fretting. What does salt in bread dough DO - apart from make it taste better, and raise some people's blood pressure?

Dan Lepard is pragmatic: My view is that, for the majority of bread recipes, the salt is an integral part of the loaf, and that bread usually needs to be considered a sodium-rich foodstuff, almost like salt-cured fish. Salt is part of the taste and enhances the flavour of the grain. But we eat to live, or should do if we respect the body that carries us, and it is right and proper that we vary our diet according to what our needs are. Please do vary or omit the salt used in the recipes here. We are told that even a small reduction in our dietary sodium intake will benefit us, and many of our processed foods have a hidden sodium (salt) content where you wouldn't expect it to be - in breakfast cereals, for example. For children, two slices of bread can sometimes equal their recommended daily sodium requirement (which is surprisingly small). So use salt respectfully.

Now that seems to me to be sensible advice, especially coming from a master baker, and one who has travelled all over Europe to watch artisan bakers at work (resulting in The Handmade Loaf, a wonderful and practical book).

All the same, it didn't quite answer the question. Why do bakers use salt? After all, we know it's not strictly necessary from the traditional Tuscan saltless loaf. What effect does the salt have? Most baking books are silent on this, they just exhort you to go out and buy the most expensive salt you can find (those books are going into the charity shop box). Eric Treuille and Ursula Ferrigno hint at what's going on in their Dorling Kindersley illustrated-as-if-for-a-child book Bread:

Salt is used in most bread recipes to control the rate of fermentation and to give flavour. The presence of salt in a dough inhibits fermentation, which strengthens the developing gluten. This results in a bread with a stable crumb, a long shelf-life and more taste than breads without it.

I consulted Elizabeth David's English Bread and Yeast Cookery, and found a more thorough answer:

It is not only because it gives the necessary flavour, or rather corrects insipidity, that salt is so important to bread. It is also in the context of its action on the yeast and the dough during the fermentation or rising period, and for its ultimate effect on the baked loaf, particularly the crust, that salt has to be considered.

First, the flavour. Those early bakers started putting salt in their bread to improve its flavour, then slowly began to appreciate, through observation, that varying amounts of salt made the dough behave differently and affected the quality as well as the taste of the loaves.

So although the amount of salt we put in our bread should, ultimately, depend on taste, individual or collective, practical application of this theory is not so straightforward a matter.

Quite apart from the widely differing salt-toleration, or salt requirements, of each individual, the strength of the ultimate salt flavour in any batch of bread will depend to some extent on the flour used - new flour absorbs more than old flour - on the kind of dough made and on the length of time it is left to ferment.

Broadly speaking, the shorter the rising time the more yeast and less salt are needed, but this is an over-simplification because proportions of both are determined by the volume of dough concerned. The larger the batch, the relatively smaller the proportion of yeast, so the balance of salt must be adjusted, at any rate in theory, to the time calculated for the fermenting or rising of the dough.

I say in theory because when it comes down to a small batch of home-baked bread, it really is not necessary to make elaborate calculations. A few experiments will surely show what is the proper quantity of all the ingredients, their relation to rising times, and to the ultimate flavour and texture of the bread. When it comes to finding out what went wrong with a loaf or a batch of bread, made apparently in every respect identically with your last successful one, then is the moment to try to remember whether perhaps your salt was carelessly measured, or if you guessed at the quantity instead of weighing it as usual.

...To me, bread with a very low salt content is virtually uneatable, and in my calculations for the rising time of the dough the extra salt I put in is allowed for. It is worth remembering that a proper proportion of salt helps the retention of moisture in the baked loaf, and that too much makes for a hard crust.

She goes on to write about the problems in re-scaling quantities of salt and yeast when altering recipes. And she throws light on the recipe I'm currently testing:

For an overnight or eight-hour rising the yeast can again be decreased without reducing the salt content It would be the high proportion of salt which would slow up the action of the yeast, and prevent the dough over-fermenting or developing a sour taste The very short rising and proving times, often as little as 40 minutes all told, sometimes given on flour-packet recipes, can only be explained by the minimal salt content of the dough.

And, for the record, she used Cheshire rock salt, bought in 6lb jars.

Links to related posts

Yeast starter for bread - and the bread make your own sourdough starter

No-knead bread the famous NY Times recipe
Speeded-up no-knead bread and a different take on it

Yoghurt bread fabulous, easy, TRY IT
Quick oat loaf
Spelt bread - it's getting easier to buy this highly-flavoured flour

Fresh corn bread - now is the perfect autumnal moment for this
Late summer hearth bread - another perfect autumn bread, this one with grapes

Anti-oxidant tea bread - I made this for my husband for a pre-surgery boost - delicious, too!

Yeast conversion - fresh/dried/quick


Things to do with stale or leftover bread

Panzanilla
Herb stuffing for roast chicken
Grilled trout with rosemary stuffing
Baked scallops
Anchovy toasts

Links to the best blogging bakers I know

Tanna at My Kitchen in Half Cups
A Year in Bread
Susan at Farmgirl Fare

this list is not exhaustive, there are dozens of wonderful blogging bakers

Pumpkin in chilli oil

I hesitate to write about something so simple, but this week I read that American recipes for pumpkin all start open a can of pumpkin .... and so I decided to blog this very easy but delicious dish. Good on its own for a light lunch, or as a side dish.

This is THE time of year for squash - they're fresh off the vine - although they'll store all through the winter, and so we'll be eating them regularly until spring. Butternut seems to be the squash of choice for supermarkets and veg box growers alike, but, from a cook's point of view, they're pretty much interchangeable (although some have much more flavour than others*).

At least once a week at the moment, I roast pumpkin plain in a little oil, often with some sliced onion - the result is a sweet, caramel-y mix, even better when flavoured with finely chopped thyme.

This pumpkin in chilli oil is quite different: the bright contrast of red and orange gives a hint of the piquancy - the sweet blandness of the pumpkin soaks up the heat and means that this is a dish even chilli-haters can eat.

Roasted pumpkin in chilli oil

Slice some slivers of garlic into a mortar. Add a little salt, a splosh of olive oil. Then add as much chilli as you dare - start with a little, particularly if, like me, you are catering for people who think they don't like hot spice. Bash vigorously until it's all amalgamated. You can do this in a food processor, but I find mine has too big a bowl and, anyway, there's something therapeutic about wielding a pestle (although I once read that the words pestle and mortar put more people off cooking than any others - feel free to do this with a machine!) . Add more oil until you have enough to generously coat your pumpkin. (There's slightly too much oil in the photograph for a really smooth mixture ... stint at first, and then add what you need for a pouring consistency.)

Next, peel, core and cube your squash**. Put the cubes into a roasting tin, coat with the spiced oil and put into a hot oven for half an hour or so. The exact timing will depend on how hot the oven is (and if you are cooking other things, then just watch it carefully), and the size of the cubes. If you are in any doubt at all about your timings, put the squash in sooner rather than later, because it will retain the heat (or you can put it back into the oven at the end for a quick blast of heat). I find, increasingly, that we eat warm vegetables, rather than hot straight from the oven.

You can also cook this ahead and then reheat it. There'd be two reasons for this - the first would be to save on oven fuel; the second would be to get ahead when you had some spare time ... make your own convenience food, in other words.

This is my entry for this month's Heart of the Matter - Ilva's hosting this month, and she chose the colour orange ... perfect for autumn.

* In the past I've grown crown of thorns and Turk's turban - both beautiful, but neither very tasty. I'd only grow them again for their looks, although Turk's turban is a very good keeper. On the other hand, Little Gem is very tasty (and increasingly available in the supermarket) ... I'm cheating here slightly, as Little Gem is really a summer squash (more like courgette, in other words), whereas Cot, TT and butternut are all winter squash and will store well.

Related posts
Frugal, seasonal food ... all pretty simple to prepare, because I don't much like faffing around in the kitchen

Butternut squash with parsley and mint softly spiced with cinnamon, a really good addition to a vegetarian dinner
Stuffed butternut squash - this is one of my most-visited posts, and a good cheap supper dish
Roast squash bites with pumpkin seed pesto - fabulous finger food, full of goodness
Pumpkin risotto

Links to squash on other blogs

**If you're nervous about cutting a butternut, Kalyn gave good directions earlier in the week.
Butternut squash apple soup - can't decide if this sounds wonderful and worth trying, or utterly disgusting ;)

Lentil soup with ruby chard

Lentil soup for lunch ... which needs careful cooking, because Lucius thinks he doesn't like lentils. He liked this soup, though. It's the autumn version of something I make quite often for a quick, cheap lunch - bosky with mushrooms and vibrant with chard.

Lentil soup with ruby chard

2 medium onions
5 handfuls of red lentils
splash of Marsala or other alcohol
dried mushrooms
good stock
chard

Chop the onions and fry gently in olive oil until golden. Soak a few dried mushrooms in boiling water. Add red lentils - about the same quantity as onions. Stir. Add a splash of Marsala (or wine, or brandy, or whatever you've got - but don't worry if you haven't got anything suitable, it's not essential, but it does add a layer of complexity to the end result).

Drain the mushrooms and add them. Then pour in stock to cover all this, enough to fill two bowls. Measure it in your serving bowls if you like - this works because some of the liquid will evaporate as the soup simmers and cooks. I used chicken stock, which I make virtually every week, an effortless chore which produces something cheaper, better and tastier than anything you can buy. But this is not a competition, it's lunch, so use whatever you've got - homemade, cube/powder, water (and I'd use water in preference to powder/cube).

It takes around 15 minutes for the lentils to cook. During this time, shred some chard or other greens. Add them to the soup when it's ready, they only need to be wilted.

We ate this with a little rosemary citrus salt. Lucius remarked on the complexity of flavours, and barely appeared to notice that he was enjoying lentil soup.

Sorry, once again no photograph. This time because of incompetence: I forgot to switch off the camera yesterday, so the battery was flat, and I don't have a spare. Shame, because the ruby chard made it look so pretty, not that boring brown that is the look of so many lentil dishes.

Chilli and pepper chutney

I made this quickly a couple of weeks ago when I was using up the veg in the bottom of the fridge before the arrival of the new organic box. I gave a bottle to Dick, who loves home-made chutney, and kept the other one. I've only just opened it, so it's only now that I know it's good enough to blog. It is, and there's just time to make some before there are no more peppers for the year.

This recipe came from Jamie Oliver in the Telegraph Magazine a few weeks ago; I've got a feeling it's an extract from his new book. I've simplified the method, to make it quicker.

Chilli and pepper chutney

red chillis (I used 4, Jamie specifies 8-10)
8 red peppers
a splash of olive oil
2 chopped onions (mine weren't red, Jamie's were)
a sprig of chopped rosemary leaves
2 bay leaves
2 tsp cinnamon (couldn't find a stick)
salt and pepper
100g brown sugar
150 ml balsamic vinegar

Start by sweating the onion in oil with the seasonings. Do it slowly, it should take at least 20 minutes until they are soft and golden.

If you want to skin your chilli and peppers, do so; I didn't bother. I took out the seeds and cores, then blitzed them all together in the Magimix (I left a few small lumps, but I was concerned not to leave great big bits of chilli, so it ended up quite finely chopped).

Add the pepper and chilli mush, together with the sugar and vinegar. Cook slowly until there's no more liquid. You should keep an eye on it, but you don't need to hang over it all the time; a little stir every so often will stop it sticking. I don't remember how long it took to cook, but allow an hour. It will be dark and thick when it is ready. Pour into sterilised jars (either run them through the dishwasher, or put them in a warm oven for half an hour or so).

You can use this straight away, but all chutneys improve with a bit of keeping.

Roasted tomato ketchup

I made this earlier in the summer, it's from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Guardian column. Compared to Heinz it was a bit of a disappointment. Not very nice on the side of your plate, mainly because of the inevitable comparison with Heinz TK, which we all know and love. I wasn't going to bother to post it, but I am doing so now because I WILL make it again next year, as I've found it wonderfully useful to add to all sorts of cooking - gravy, soup, stew, etc etc. It really needs another name, to avoid invidious comparisons.

Roast tomato ketchup

1 litre of sieved roasted tomatoes
100g soft brown sugar
100 ml cider vinegar
1 tbps ground black pepper
pinch of ground mace
pinch of cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1/2 tsp ground coriander seeds
2 bay leaves

Put everything into a large saucepan on a low heat. Stir frequently - first to help the sugar dissolve, then to stop it sticking. After about 45 minutes at a gentle bubble, it should be thick enough to bottle.

You should keep this in the fridge; I imagine that it would freeze well, too, although then you might not want to put it into a glass bottle.


There's just time to make some of this with the last of the summer's tomatoes. I wonder what it would taste like made with green tomatoes?

Quince liqueur

The distinctive and heady scent of quince transports me instantly to childhood and my grandmother's kitchen in 1950s Oxford. She used to make a delicious jam from fruit given to her by a neighbour, and it was a long job cutting the hard fruit into tiny cubes.

We have a quince in our garden, planted about 25 years ago by my mother-in-law, who used to put a few slices of poached quince into her stewed apple, rather in the way you might add a couple of cloves.

I make quince jam and jelly regularly, and this year, for the first time, I'm making quince liqueur - not to drink (although it's perfectly drinkable), but to use in my cooking throughout next year. It was a quick job, thanks to the Magimix, which made very short work of grating the fruit. I used Jane Grigson's recipe from her Fruit Book.

Quince liqueur

a one-litre preserving jar
3 quinces
60g caster sugar
about 600 ml vodka

Wipe the fluff from the quince with a dry cloth. Cut them in half so that they will fit into the feeder tube of the Magimix. Grate - yes, really, the whole fruit, skin, pips and all. The scented fruit will more or less fill your jar. Add the sugar, then the vodka, making sure that all the fruit is covered. Seal. Put in a dark place for a couple of months - there's no need to turn it.

This will need straining in December or January, at which point more sugar could be added. And then it will add a useful flavouring note to savoury as well as sweet dishes; quince is not only distinctive, it is also very strong - one quince on the kitchen table can scent a whole house.

Slow roasted tomatoes

I've been slow-roasting tomatoes like there was no tomorrow ... or, more specifically, because we are fast approaching the moment of the year when there'll be no more tomatoes for those of us who try to eat only local and seasonal food.

Whichever recipe you are following, you start in the same way: cut your tomatoes in half, sprinkle them with thyme and drizzle them with oil. At this point, there's huge variation in ideas ... I've tried four or five different speeds, and the very best, Rolls Royce way to roast tomatoes, is to put them in the oven at 80-100C for 11 or 12 hours. This, of course, isn't always possible. If you don't start early in the morning, you'll have a very late night. If you start too early in the evening then you have to have an early start. So you can boost the temperature to about 120C and cook them for seven or eight hours. You'll quite quickly know how they should look when they're done, dried out but not browned - and you'll find they cook at different rates, depending on size and - possibly - variety & age.

Then, there are a number of options. Some people slip off the skins (best done while they're still warm); I don't bother. You can pack them in boxes or plastic bags and freeze them to use in soups and stews. You can put them into jars (with more thyme, perhaps a bay leaf, etc) and cover them with olive oil, then they'll keep for 4-6 weeks in the fridge, and the oil (surprisingly little) is deliciously flavoured for cooking later. Or you can sieve them to make passata (best frozen).

I keep a plastic box on the go in the fridge ... I pull them to pieces in a salad (lovely to mix fresh with roasted), I heat them quickly to have on toast for breakfast, I use them in sauces which need a flavour boost. I think they'd be great pulled apart and thrown over pasta with some oil and a few chilli flakes for a quick supper.

Really useful, delicious, quick, a fabulous way to use up a glut of tomatoes (not a real problem for us this year, sadly), and very eco-friendly.

Homemade tomato ketchup .. & caponata-ish

Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall gave this recipe in his column in the Guardian a few weeks ago, and, as I've never made ketchup before, I followed the recipe exactly. Even before we tasted it, I thought you could simplify this without loss of taste. So when everyone was lukewarm about it as an accompaniment to fish and chips, I thought it might be hard to use it up.

Not a bit of it! I've now discovered that it makes the most fantastic five-minute caponata, and since aubergine is my favourite summer vegetable, that's a bonus. To make the caponata-ish, cube the aubergine, fry in olive oil till fairly soft, add some of the ketchup, a few sultanas and some capers. Simmer for a few minutes. Best eaten lukewarm, if you can wait that long.

Back to the point, this is how you make the ketchup. It's a two part recipe, first you have to roast the tomatoes (I know a better way to do this), then sieve them. When you've recovered from this (does he have a machine? I just have a sieve, a wooden spoon, and aching arms), you simmer the passata with sugar and spice.

HFW's roast tomatoes

To make one litre, use about 2kg ripe tomatoes; the more flavour they have, the better the finished ketchup. Cut them in half, put them in a single layer on a roasting sheet, and sprinkle with finely chopped garlic (two or three cloves), some thyme, and olive oil. Roast for 45-60 minutes at 180C, until they are soft and beginning to blacken at the edges. Remove from the oven, and sieve to a pulp when they are cool enough to work.

HFW's tomato ketchup

one litre roast tomato sauce
100g soft brown sugar
100 ml cider vinegar
salt
one tbsp ground black pepper
pinch of mace
pinch of cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1/2 tsp ground coriander seeds
two bayleaves

Put all the ingredients into a stainless steel saucepan and bring to the boil. Simmer gently for about 45 minutes, stirring frequently so that it doesn't stick. It will gradually thicken, although it won't be as thick as Heinz TK. Check your seasonings, then bottle. It will keep for a month and more in the fridge.

Here's a link to Guardian Unlimited which has HFW's original piece, Reddy Steady Cook (there's an art to writing headlines that bad!)


Good, but not as good as Heinz TK; really useful to use as the base for a quick vegetable stew; really useful if you've got a glut of tomatoes, as a change from slow roasted tomatoes preserved in oil. Alfred said he'd like it to dress pasta, but I thought it might be a little too vinegary for that.


I've just bought an old government-issue book on food preserving, which gives timings for boiling pickles and preserves to give them a long shelf life and keep them out of the fridge. It may take a while to get the equipment together, but I'll post as soon as I've got something to report.

Cumin in beetroot soup

I've never really liked cumin. Until last night. We went to a lovely birthday dinner for Lucius's old friend Tim: old friends, good conversation, good food.

We started with beetroot soup, its jewel colour set off by the emerald blue ring round the soup dishes. The cumin emphasised the sweetness of the beet. It wasn't harsh or overwhelming, which is how cumin often tastes on my palate.

I like to think of myself as a competent cook, and I'm not heavy-handed with spices, so I think it must be a failure of shopping rather than cooking. I've looked up cumin, and have found what I think must be the cause of the trouble ... Wikipedia says that the strong, warm aroma (is) due to their abundant essential oil content. So dry frying the seeds before grinding them is clearly important - and keeping a fresh fresh stock of seeds is obviously essential. We're just not eating it fast enough!

Time to go shopping, I think! Some corners are not worth cutting.



PS as soon as I finished writing this post, just as I was about to hit the publish button, it occurred to me that I ought to be able to grow cumin ... it's a member of the parsley family, and that grows well in this garden, if I can keep the rabbits away. There's nothing in any of my gardening books about cumin (this PS is the fruit of half an hour's happy browsing!). So I thought I'd try one last place ... in the next village is one of the prettiest and best of nurseries, the Herb Farm. I telephoned, and the owner answered the phone. No, they didn't grow it any more, because it never sold, but yes, they have seed.

And for the horticulturally-minded amongst you, like parsley, it needs a warm soil to germinate, and germination takes a while.

This has just turned into a post for Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted this week by Rachel's Bite

Char-sui and noodles

The recipe that follows is char sui-ishier than anything in Nigella's book, although that's what was open when I put the marinade together. A couple of pork tenderloins (aka pork fillet, why DO supermarkets like to re-name everything?) are sitting in their marinade in the fridge waiting to be cooked tomorrow night - when I'll be in a hurry and won't feel like starting from scratch.

In How to Eat, Nigella gives two recipes for char sui, one which is fairly Chinese, the other with what was in her fridge on the night. Well, what was in my fridge tonight didn't quite do her first recipe, so this is what I used for two fillets:

4 tbsp light soy sauce
2 tbsp tomato ketchup
3 tbsp hoisin sauce
2 tbsp Madeira (no ginger wine or sweet sherry - EVER!)
2 tbsp runny honey
2 tbsp soft brown sugar

Tomorrow, I'll cook the meat (drained from its marinade) in a hot oven (220C) for 15 minutes, then turn it down to 160C until it's cooked (20-30 minutes, in my case both, because one is bigger than the other!). It needs basting with the sauce. When it's done, put the meat to one side, pour in the rest of the marinade, perhaps with a little water, and cook it through.

The resulting char sui is good hot or cold, cut into thin slices or little cubes (the meat you find in takeaway special fried rice). We're going to eat it with the noodles I made for lunch this week, and pak choi (from Riverford) dressed with oyster sauce.

The secret of cooking is the release of fragrance ...

"The secret of cooking is the release of fragrance and the art of imparting it. Fragrance: the bay laurel, Laurus nobilis, a sacred tree, how brightly, how fiercely it burns. Gather its dark-leaved branches in summer if you can. Sweet the influence of rosemary, its ungainly shrubby stems bursting with pale lilac flowers. Pungent the mint trodden underfoot on the way to the orchard. Peppery and sweet the scent of wild marjoram, origano, self-drying in July on droughty limestone hillsides; lemon-scented the clumps of wild savory, poor man's pepper, producing its minute snapdragon flowers in August, picked by quarrymen on their way down from the quarry. Irresistible the bunches of herbs sold in the market place by an old man who bothers to gather them, shrubby sprigs of thyme nibbled by hares in high pastures and green-leaved sage, and clary. Holy the Byzantine perfume of coriander leaves and seeds, recalling the smell of incense burning in a Greek chapel perched on the spine of a bare mountain. Passer-by, grasp the invitation proffered by fennel flowers and seeds on brittle stalks leaning out from the hillside. Savour the strange sweet taste of juniper berries, blue-black, picked in September on a chalk down where nothing much else will grow. Wander through the maquis in spring when shrubby sages, thyme, rosemary, cistus, lentisk and myrtle are in flower. Inhale the fragrance of the wilderness.

"I would like to transport you to the house of Maurin Bacciagulupo, the guardian of the temple of Diana at Luni. In front of his door on the plain of Luni stands the skeleton of the Roman temple. Maurin's threshing floor is divided from it only by the twisted branches of an immeasurably old vine. Looking west you see the great extent of Tyrrhenian Sea at a distance and the long line of hills which terminates in the promontory, the Punta Bianca. Looking eastwards, are the high Apuanian mountains, in springtime still capped with snow, behind which barrier lurk the mysterious backlands of the Lunigiana. On the lower slopes the mountain villages adhere to their mountain background like lumps of coral.

"Maurin used to keep seven bulls. He was a bachelor as befits the guardian of this temple. In his house was a spacious kitchen with red brick floor, the high ceiling made of beams, whitewashed. There was a big hearth, a bottle gas stove, a table, chairs, a settle. Behind the settle was an array of copper and aluminium pans suspended from a wooden framework on the wall. At the window was a stone sink, the drinking water kept in a large terracotta Tuscan bowl with a glaze of green marbling inside. The water was drawn from the well outside. The cheese was kept in the kitchen drawer out of the way of the cats, and the bread in the bread chest. The cantina across the passage was well stocked with wine, both white and red.

"This man had always lived on the farm within sight of the sea and in touch with the sea breeze. The house was exposed to the moon's rise and the sun's set. He had the lilting speech of the Genoese. He had reduced his diet to a very few things because he refused to touch anything that was not genuine. This eliminated bread baked in an electric oven, industrially confected sausages and salami, cheese which had been artifically matured, wine which had been tampered with.

"He prepared the meal with deliberate movements and a certain solemnity. The pasta was cooked in an enormous aluminium cauldron in a great quantity of boiling water, salted of course with sea salt. When it was al dente he strained it through an impressive colander at the sink, and then placing an ample white china bowl on the kitchen table, at which we were already sipping his delicious white wine, he poured in the pasta, then the sauce, and with great deliberation, turned the spaghetti about with two forks to distribute the sauce. The fragrance of this sauce, whether it was a pesto or made of fresh tomatoes slowly simmered with garlic and herbs, was not only communicated to the pasta but to his guests. Beato te! Maurin."

This is taken from Honey from a Weed, an extraordinary book I am reading at the moment, by Patience Gray. It was published in 1986, and describes her life and the food she cooked and ate in various Mediterranean locations from the early 1960s. I was originally going to give you only the first paragraph, but this passage is so entirely whole, so closely argued, that I wanted to share the whole chapter with you. Food for thought, and of the highest quality. No wonder it's never been out of print.

Rosemary citrus salt

When you decide to cut cheese out of most of your cooking, you're left with a problem: how to give your food a certain savoury taste. Nothing is the same as cheese, and none of my ideas is intended to replace cheese - but lots of the other seasonings I use, including this one, add piquancy rather than smothering with their own all-pervasive flavour. I've come to like this new way of flavouring food rather better than using cheese, and I now don't particularly like the taste of cooked cheese. But I still think there's little to beat a slice of well-made Cheddar, or Stilton, or Vacherin, or ... well, you get the idea.


Rosemary citrus salt is one of a number of useful things to keep in the fridge and use where you might once have used cheese. It takes moments to prepare, and keeps forever in a little plastic box in the fridge. Put 100g Maldon sea crystals in a mortar, add the finely grated zest of a lemon and an orange (earlier in the year a Seville orange might be extra tang-y), and the chopped leaves of a couple of twigs of rosemary. Bash it all up until you get a sticky mess, then spread it out thinly onto a baking tray. It needs to dry out before you can store it, so I put it on top of my Aga for a few hours, but anywhere warm and dry would do. It goes on lots of things, to make them a little more exciting - fish, lamb, gratins - and makes a change from anchovy breadcrumbs, another stalwart of this kitchen.

I've posted this before, but in a place where it could easily be missed, so here it is again, with an idea for using it.

There's something fishy about this cauliflower

They say that vegetarians miss bacon the most; for us, the saturated fat we'd both most like to eat is cheese. The trouble is that the low fat cheeses are mostly not worth bothering with, and even the medium fat cheeses are 30% or more saturated fat. So it has to be an occasional treat - a small amount, twice a week max.

So it's a shame to use up the cheese allowance in the cooking, where you can't savour it to the full. The problem is, how to get the necessary note of savoury into the cooking? I mean, how to cook cauliflower cheese without the cheese?

The answer won't please vegetarians, but makes a really good gratin: I smother the steamed cauliflower in a white sauce made with olive oil, flour, and skimmed milk, so that it tastes deliciously sweet. Then I top it with my anchovy breadcrumb mix before putting it in the oven to brown for 25 minutes. Despite the title of this post, it doesn't taste remotely fishy, but satisfyingly savoury.

Savoury breadcrumbs

Blitz three or four slices of bread - whatever you've got, but, in truth, white makes a softer mixture. Stale is fine, probably better than fresh. You want the crumbs to be very fine, although I often leave a few lumps for texture. In a heavy frying pan, gently sizzle the contents of a 50g tin of anchovy in olive oil (you can cut them up first if you like). When they've started to melt, add the breadcrumbs, turn up the heat, and fry for two or three minutes stirring all the time, until they are golden. Leave to cool completely before storing in a plastic box in the fridge. They'll keep for ages, and you can use them in 101 ways, not just to zizz up the cauliflower (you can use them to stuff tomatoes or mushrooms, for instance).

I've posted this for doodles, who asked me what we do instead of cheese. This is just one idea, and I'll pull it all together for a comprehensive post next week, when I've had a chance to think it all through, and perhaps take a photo or two. And as I know that Kalyn like's cauliflower, this is my entry for this week's weekend herb blogging!

Sorrel

This scruffy-looking plant is my sorrel patch. Every garden should have one: the taste of sorrel is like nothing else - and I've never seen it for sale anywhere, not even in France.

In some ways it's like spinach, only with a lemony sharpness to it, and none of that Popeye'd metallic feel on your tongue. Just like spinach, it cooks down to nothing - a sludgy khaki-coloured nothing, rather than that deep rich yet bright spinach green. You can use young leaves raw in a salad to add piquancy.

It's an easy plant. Mine grow in an east-facing bed, with poor stony soil, and no attention from anybody, except harvesting. I was given two or three roots, probably in the autumn. It's a perennial plant, the sort that looks after itself, and just appears again when the days are noticeably longer, the air a little warmer. Now is a good time to sow seed, and I don't think they're particularly difficult to propagate. I should think they'd do well in a pot, although I haven't tried.

Grow it near the kitchen, so that you can easily keep picking a succession of young leaves - they appear out of the ground all summer like red spears before unfurling a shield-shaped leaf. Cookery books tend to specify "a handful", and that's because you can't buy it. Don't worry too much about quantities, but remember that however you are cooking your sorrel, one handful per person is plenty, even though it cooks right down, because even the young leaves have a strong taste.

This week our roast chicken was accompanied by a little mess of sorrel cooked in the water that clung after washing. Three or four minutes in an uncovered saucepan, keeping an eye on it, keeping it moving with a wooden spoon, cooked at the last minute whilst dishing up the rest of the meal. Next time I might stir in a little fromage frais to make a sauce. Or serve it with fish. Or add it to an omelette. Sorrel makes all of these dishes special - and keeps people guessing, since it is not well known in this country.

A real treat, even if gardening is not really your thing, although it may be if you have found this link through weekend herb blogging (this is the first time I have taken part in a blog event, so please forgive me if I've done it wrong).

Three root mash, for Lettice

On Saturday, we went temporarily mad, and drove for a couple of hours to watch Alfred play hockey in Cheltenham. Lettice was very keen to see him play, and this was the only opportunity she would have this term. So off we went, leaving the house straight after a late breakfast (kippers, great start to the weekend). On the way, we stopped at the Kilkenny Inn*, which is just outside Cheltenham, where we had a good, home-cooked lunch (soup for Lucius, steak sandwich for Lettice, chicken Caesar for me) whilst reading the papers.

Lettice found a recipe for three root mash. "Let's have that for lunch tomorrow." "Well, we're having mashed potato tonight." "Please, please, PLEASE." And so we did. With game stew, made with a mix of venison, pheasant and partridge bought from my wonderful butcher Gabriel Machin* in Henley.

We didn't read the recipe properly, I don't even know which paper it was in. We just made it up as we went along: I peeled and chunked equal quantities of carrot and parsnip, then boiled them until they were tender. Meanwhile, I peeled some potatoes, roughly the same amount as the combined carrot and parsnip. These I cooked separately. When I drained the carrot and parsnip, I kept the cooking water. Then I blitzed them in the Magimix, adding a little cooking water. Meanwhile, I drained and mashed the potatoes, again using some of the saved cooked water to loosen the mixture(I didn't keep the potato water because it's so starchy). And then I combined them. The result was a beautiful orangey-mash, sweet to taste, and particularly good with the venison.

We also ate a cauliflower gratin (steamed cauli, bathed in a bechamel made with olive oil and skimmed milk), and topped with rosemary citrus salt (I thought I'd posted this before, but I haven't, so the "recipe" follows), braised leeks (chopped into rings, and gently stewed in olive oil), and red cabbage from the night before.

The rosemary citrus salt is one of a number of useful things to keep in the fridge and use where you might once have used cheese. It takes moments to prepare, and keeps forever in a little plastic box in the fridge. Put 100g Maldon sea crystals in a mortar, add the finely grated zest of a lemon and an orange (at this time of year a Seville orange might by extra tang-y), and the chopped leaves of a couple of twigs of rosemary. Bash it all up until you get a sticky mess, then spread it out thinly onto a baking tray. It needs to dry out before you can store it, so I put it on top of my Aga for a few hours, but anywhere warm and dry would do. It goes on lots of things, to make them a little more exciting - fish, lamb, gratins - and makes a change from anchovy breadcrumbs, another stalwart of this kitchen.


*Neither of these excellent establishments has a website, although they both appear in various listing sites

PS Alfred won't thank me for telling you, but his team lost

Quick post about a quick lunch

All the children have gone back to their various colleges and schools, so today is the first quiet day of the year. I normally don't bother to make lunch when it's just me (there's nearly always something left over in the fridge, or fruit, or salad), but I've got a cold, and hanker after carbohydrate. I cooked a bowl of spaghetti, coated it in olive oil and the juice of half a lime, added some finely chopped coriander, then some of the fried anchovy crumbs which are now a permanent feature of my fridge, together with a little pinch of dried chilli seeds. Delicious. The key to fast food is a little preparation, carried out when you've got time and/or feel like cooking.

Vegetables for lunch

The BBC website has a story today that new research at Imperial College London shows that eating lots of veg cuts blood pressure. Researchers studied 4,680 middle-aged people, and found significant benefits to eating vegetable protein. On the other hand, they didn't find evidence that eating lots of meat was linked to high blood pressure. So - plenty of veg, including lots of beans for the protein, some meat (with the visible fat removed), along with regular portions of oily fish. Puddings to be fruit-based where possible. More or less what we're doing.

Yesterday, for lunch, I had noodle soup. Just one of those small cheap blocks of 3-minute noodles. But it couldn't have been further from the salty, monosodium-glutamatey taste the manufacturers had prepared in a sachet to go with them. First I chopped and stir fried some spring greens with a little chopped garlic. Then I added some home-made stock I had in the fridge which I made at the weekend after we had roast chicken for supper. When the noodles were cooked, I stirred in some crabmeat which I couldn't resist when I went shopping in the morning. A squeeze of lemon, some pepper. Delicious. And it only took about a minute longer than opening the sachet over the noodles. Afterwards I thought that it would be one dish where tinned crabmeat would be perfectly acceptable.

Today, I had a stir-fry of more spring greens, lots of them, with some chopped garlic. When they were done, I stirred in a teaspoon of the chilli jam I made in the autumn, and sprinkled them with some re-fried anchovy breadcrumbs lurking in the back of the fridge, then squirted the juice of half a lime which has been sitting around on the worktop for several days. Really good, lots of flavours.

There were three key ingredients which made these meals quick and easy to prepare, all of them home-made, but none of them particularly time-consuming:

Stock is something I make automatically after we have roast chicken; it doesn't take long, I feel thrifty, the ingredients are all to hand, and it means there's no temptation to use expensive stock which comes in not very bio-degradable plastic pots (I don't use stock cubes any more, because even the best-quality ones have ingredients which I either don't understand or know I don't want to eat). To make stock, I remove any meat left which can be used for another meal; I put the bones in a large pan with any leftover veg (but not potato, because the starch clouds the stock). I put in some fresh veg if I have it - celery, carrots, parsley stalks - and a few whole peppercorns (mine are multi-coloured), occasionally, for a change, a couple of cloves. I cover this with water, put the pot on to simmer, covered, for a couple of hours. Or more if I forget it. Then I strain it, cool it, put it in the fridge, and when I start to run out of it, I go out and buy another chicken for dinner. The main thing is not to get hung up on quantities or even timing, just to do it, and then do it again better - which is to say, how you like it. Recipe books often tell you to reduce it; I don't bother, because it steams up the kitchen, and you quite often have to add more water when it's concentrated (especiallly if you're making risotto). Sometimes I'll reduce a little for a specific dish, and that saves a lot of trouble.

I've written about the anchovy crumbs before (you just blitz some bread, add a tin of anchovies, blitz again, then fry them up, and use them instead of cheese on pasta, in soup, as a crispy topping for tuna bake, or - well, with whatever could do with a little crunch and zip). Now I have discovered that anchovy crumbs keep very well in the fridge, and can be used either straight from the fridge, or refried. I shall start making them in bulk and keeping them in an airtight box (at the moment, storage is haphazard, although they don't seem to suffer).

The chilli jam was something I made in November, when I felt like cooking one afternoon; there wasn't much work involved, although I had to be around to watch it while it cooked down. I've just sent the last bottle to a fellow food blogger, so I'll have to make some more in the next couple of weeks, as I now can't imagine life without it for pepping things up. As I said earlier, I have stopped using stock cubes, so I sometimes need strong tastes to stir in to sauces - chilli jam makes a change from, say, Worcester sauce or Marmite, or even stock. I'm not techie enough to give you a link to the original recipe, so I'm reproducing it here:

"This is terrific chilli jam, better than any I've made before. It takes moments to prepare, and then not quite an hour and a half to simmer before bottling. This is enough for nearly three Bonne Maman jars.

"Blend 400g whole tomatoes, four chillies (seeds and all), six cloves of garlic, two small knobs of ginger (don't bother to peel them), & half a little bottle of Thai fish sauce. Put this in a saucepan with 450g ordinary sugar, and 8 tbsp red wine vinegar. Bring to a simmer. Meanwhile, finely chop another 400g tomatoes. Add them to the pan, and gently simmer for at least an hour, stirring occasionally. You have to judge for yourself when it's cooked, and it may well take longer than an hour to reach a set (it will set without trouble, because tomatoes are full of pectin)."

A St Andrew's Day feast

Just back from St Andrew's Day at Eton, to collect Horatio. He spent the morning playing rackets against Old Etonians, beating them 3-0, and then rushing on to play in a football match against yet more Old Etonians, beating them 4-2. I managed to fit in a quick visit to the art school on the way from rackets court to soccer pitch, where there was some stunning work. Horatio's series of three showed Churchill + bulldog, first in collage, then in print, then abstrcted into a huge oil painting, in which, by some magical & probably unintended process, Churchill looked rather like Mussolini. There was also an exhibition of late 20th century St Ives painters, so a chance to commune with Terry Frost, Rachel Nicholson, Hepworth, and best of all Patrick Heron. No chance of affording even the lithographs!

On the way home, I suddenly realised I had made no plans whatsoever for lunch. So, when we got home, I put on a tomato sauce (one large onion, a tin of good Italian tomatoes, the chopped remains of last night's tomato salad, some olive oil and the end of a bottle of red wine). Then I put on some maccheroni, nice artisanal pasta of the sort you can buy in Waitrose. So far so ordinary. Especially dull for those of us who don't eat much cheese, and prefer to save the notional allowance for savouring a little piece at a time (no bigger than a matchbox, no more than twice a week). So I blitzed the end of a sourdough loaf, added a couple of anchovies from the jar I generally have in the fridge, fried that in some olive oil. When it was crunchy, a grated on a little lemon zest and added a few chopped parsley leaves. I felt almost sorry for Horatio, topping his pasta with boring old parmesan!

Salsa verde

Okay, well I think I've made everyone feel thoroughly daunted by posting that list of good things to eat. Those are just suggestions for what you can best eat instead of all the nasty saturated fats you are taking out of your diet. They come from the Superfoods book listed, as do the suggestions for how often you could be eating them for maximum benefit. We try to eat a lot of those foods, but don't always manage. And we don't worry about it, because our number one rule is NOT TO BECOME NEUROTIC ABOUT FOOD.

When we began this, the biggest problem seemed to be making food taste of something. No butter, not much salt, no cheese, it all began to seem rather tasteless. We eat enormous quantities of herbs, and quite a few spices. Lucius claims that spices are "wasted on him", but we now eat quite a lot of mild curry (cumin, maybe just a little chili), and he likes it a lot. (By the way, when making mild curry, be aware that coconut contains a great deal of saturated fat.)

Salsa verde

Salsa verde is something I always have on the go - it makes anything bland taste wonderful. We use it on potatoes, in soup, with boring chicken breast when I couldn't think of anything to cook. It takes five minutes to make, keeps at least a week, and is particularly useful for producing instant meals.

This is the basic recipe, which you must feel free to vary. It's slightly different every time I make it.

Process 2 cloves of garlic, some capers, a tin of anchovy fillets, a bunch of flat parsley, of basil, of mint, 1 tbsp Dijon mustard, 3 tbsp red wine vinegar, 8 tbsp good olive oil. You can vary the proportions. It's especially good with a lot of mint, and I often use coriander. The aim is to get a sauce the consistency of homemade mayonnaise (but it's quicker and easier to make).