Yet more roast potatoes

The boys made roast potatoes for dinner last night. The theme was (clue: stars and stripes in roasting tin) largely American, in honour of their cousins ... a Golden Gate bridge, a Grand Canyon, a few Bart Simpsons, a Micky Mouse, a fabulous hamburger. Alfred tried to make a tractor with moving parts, but it wouldn't reassemble after the potatoes were cooked. They did, however, manage a working chest of drawers. My father was given an Eiffel Tower - much better than the one Horatio made a couple of years ago, this one was edible all the way through (the dogs wouldn't eat the earlier effort).

Once again, I got a flower with a hole in it, and we all know that roast potatoes with holes in taste sweeter .... if you don't believe me, I urge you to conduct your own tasting





































































Related links

A couple of summers ago, the boys were adamant that my "girlie" roast potatoes didn't quite cut the mustard, and so we ate them three nights in a row, while everyone put their oar in ...

The roast potato taste test
That's enough roast potatoes


and then, a little later, disaster struck the water supply, and I was reduced to buying Frozen roast potatoes

This week's girlie potatoes that started them off last night ...

A cold day - let's read some recipe books while the going's good

There's a deep frost here - the Mahonia has given up scenting the garden, which those yellow flower buds normally do pretty effectively in the weak winter sunshine. I'm planning to stay indoors as much as possible, and read Laurie Colwin's Home Cooking, a very ace Christmas present. And perhaps do a little more cooking from Fergus Henderson's Nose to Tail. And trying not to get the cough which has been plaguing this house for a week or more.

Two families & their pasta

My boys are very keen on four-cheese pasta, just about the only ready-made food I still buy: tortelloni with a mixture of cheeses. Waitrose has sold an own-brand version for years, and that is what I've always bought them. Until this week, when it had vanished from the shelves, in its place a branded version made by Del'Ugo.

On the back of the unfamiliar new pack I found a letter from the owner of the business, Paul Ugo, about its history. And I realised that Paul's grandfather was the man my grandfather bought pasta from for three decades. Let me re-wind a little here.

My grandparents met in 1915 in Italy, both members of a Red Cross unit led by the historian GM Trevelyan which served the Italian armies fighting the vicious mountaineering war on the Isonzo front. My grandmother was a VAD nurse, my grandfather the unit administrator. Amongst other legacies of that terrible time, my grandparents were left with a lifelong love of Italy and Italian food (also the ability to talk in fast and fluent Italian when they didn't want us to know what they were saying).

Luigi Ugo arrived in London in 1921 aged 14, and began making fresh pasta by hand for restaurants. He opened a shop in Gerrard Street in 1929, which soon expanded so that he was able to import machinery from Italy to establish a small fresh pasta factory.

And so on Saturdays, my grandfather, on his way home from work at the British Museum, where he was Keeper of Incunabula, would walk to Soho to Luigi Ugo's shop to buy fresh pasta. When they moved to Oxford, they missed Luigi's shop - I remember them pining for it. Instead, they befriended the Italian proprietors of the Luna Caprese in North Parade - but that's another story of family connections, discovered at the school gate when my younger daughter was five years old.


PS the photograph shows my grandfather arriving at our wedding on the arm of my uncle, who is now about the same age as my grandfather was when the picture was taken

A New Yorker cartoon to cheer us all up

Just come back from the funeral of an old and dear family friend. Lots of people from my childhood were there, and the remnants of my parent's friends. I've chosen a cartoon at random from the New Yorker to cheer myself up ... not sure why it makes me laugh, but it does

This wonderful, pagan knocker is on the door of Durham Cathedral.

In the Middle Ages, the cathedral could be used as a place of sanctuary by fugitives. If you'd committed a serious offence, you could claim sanctuary by knocking at the door (the knocker is very high). You then had 37 days to organise your affairs, and either stand trial, or leave the country by the nearest port.



















I took my reluctant boys to the cathedral yesterday morning as we were passing, and it's very close to the motorway. There's a chapel for the Durham Light Infantry, my grandfather's regiment, and I was glad to be there the day before the anniversary of his death in 1941. He served in the DLI in the first world war; in the second world war he served in the Royal Artillery, so his name is not in the DLI roll of honour in the Cathedral. But it was good during this hectic season to have a quiet moment's reflection about a man I love but never met.

A story for Armistice Day

My grandfather was born in 1899. Just right to serve in two world wars. He was a talented sportsman (played international rugger in the 1920s), and saw many of the best members of his school XV go straight from school into the army, and on to the endless casualty lists. When he left school in the summer of 1917, he went straight into the Durham Light Infantry, and by Armistice Day he was a German prisoner of war.

For years, I thought that the photograph above was taken when he was in his mid 20s. It is only very recently that I discovered he was 18 when it was taken; he had just left school, just swapped his Marlborough uniform for that of the Durham Light Infantry. My younger son goes to the same school, plays rugger on the same pitches, and is also a fly half. I cannot imagine - I have tried, but I cannot cannot - what it can have felt like to be at school, watching the older boys enlist and be killed, week by week, month by month, year by year, knowing that soon it would be your turn. One family lost three sons in quick succession; my grandfather played games in the same team as two of them - these were boys he knew well.

During the second world war, my grandfather joined the Royal Artillery, and just before Christmas 1941 died on active service in Wandsworth, where he ran a searchlight battery. Not very glamorous. This morning I visited his memorial at Mortlake Cemetery, where I was unexpectedly overcome with an intense feeling of grief for a man I've never met, but whose birthday I share.


















This afternoon, I was at Twickenham, home of England rugby, and home of the Harlequins at the time my grandfather played for that great club. There I found a team photograph taken before my grandfather's first match for England, against Wales at Cardiff Arms Park in 1922. He looked strangely vulnerable - a mixture of apprehension and excitement. The photograph below was probably taken during that match. V.G. Davies - my grandfather - is on the left. Heaven knows what treatment the spongeman is giving his unfortunate team-mate!

A teenage guide to eating

When both the boys said YEeeeuuuuuuch to all my suggestions for lunch, I asked them to write down the all food they actually like eating. They both have a tendency to be fussy eaters - at one stage, Alfred (aged about four) would only eat pizza, but not if it had anything other than tomato sauce and grated cheddar. Horatio's always been prepared to be adventurous: aged about seven, he ordered and ate a plate of moules in a busy Brussels restaurant, and they've been a favourite ever since.

Here's the list. It's a little book. It took them half an hour. The second edition is due out soon, because they said they couldn't be put on the spot if they were expected to remember everything.























The big ambition of the title page gives way to - well, I leave that to you to decide (it's just that I wish they wouldn't make the yeuch noise when we are eating legumes as a side dish)






















Meat is the thing they like to eat best, it's what they always request ... and they'd much rather not be fobbed off with fish, or vegetables. Pasta's okay, so long as it isn't too fancy. As you see, macaroni cheese is given honorary meat status.











































The list of vegetables they'll eat is surprisingly long (and includes tomatoes, only Horatio is too pedantic to put them in this list). But they don't like any of these veg mucked about - it's no use thinking you could make guacamole, or that you might strip the corn off the cob to make, say, cornbread. Just plain, thank you, and preferably covered in butter.























As for fruit: well, I've never known either of them to choose to eat fruit, although they will if cajoled. Interesting that neither of them mentions bananas - not sure if they've been forgotten, or whether they truly are disliked.
























I can (& frequently do) cook three meals a day for them, yet still come down in the morning to find the detritus of late-night cooking. This is a list of what they like. Microwave popcorn is never on my shopping list because of the horrible additives .... but they don't use their own money to buy it, they just complain that I won't (even though the kitchen is well supplied with old-fashioned popping corn).
























The last two pages are lists of individual favourites. Alfred won't eat anything spicy hot, unlike Horatio, but he's very keen on making toasted sandwiches in a press.










































I don't have any idea how typical this list is for teenage boys. What do your teenagers eat? Any tips for widening their palates? And lessening their dependency on processed foods and on meat?

Happy birthday H

It's our elder son's 20th birthday today. His final teenage act was to telephone at 3am to ask if he could bring a few friends to lunch.

He was born on a sunny Sunday morning at home in our old four-poster. Out of the window I could see the laburnum tree in full flower - ever since I've had a soft spot for it, even though I don't really care for that bright bright yellow. These photographs were taken last week; the flowers are over now, summer starts earlier these days.

Happy birthday!

Food blogging: mad, or what?

The conversation turned to food. Alfred (15) said you're mad, mum, when it comes to food. Indignant noises from cooker (I'm not the only one, loads of people are trying to do their best to feed their families as well as they can, blah blah blah). Yes you are, who else would photograph their salad instead of getting on and eating it? Wherever you are, you probably heard his roars of laughter when I replied: I haven't taken a food photograph for days.

He's in the kitchen now, creating a bacon sandwich. He's sent me off to look up a better tomato sauce for his pizza than the one he made yesterday for his lunch (A Year in Bread). He's planning to make a Chinese dinner for us all later this week, even though he's never done that before, just because he likes the taste of it. A chip off the old block? Not, perhaps, as sane as he thinks he is?

No photograph. I wouldn't want you all to think I was mad.


Related links

Pizza for lunch
Pissaladiere
White pizzas with fennel seeds
Processed foods: some nutritional info

Lasagne topping

All of the children were home for lunch today, and my parents. Rare event. Lasagne for lunch - easy (necessary, since lunch was late because everyone was caught up with watching the final of the Australian Open). I'd cooked the bolognese yesterday, Lettice layered it with the sheets of pasta, while I mixed up the topping:

2 eggs, beaten
500ml 0% yoghurt
nutmeg
pepper

Mix all this together and pour on the top of your lasagne. Either, drizzle with a little olive oil, or grate on a little parmesan.

The result is a tangy topping, lighter and rather more interesting than a bechamel-based cheese sauce. It's also quicker - important if you arrive back from the station (fetching elder daughter) after your guests.

No photograph: you all know what lasagne looks like ;)

Chairman Mao's red braised pork revisited

When I made Chairman Mao's red braised pork a couple of weeks ago, none of the children was at home. When Lucius came home that evening, he went straight to bed with a temperature. So I ate it alone, two nights in a row. I thought it good enough to do again. I thought they'd all like it. So I made it last night. You should have heard the whingeing.

To be honest, it wasn't what I was expecting. What were you expecting? Well, something with a bright red thick sauce, and chunks of raw peppers and onions. You mean takeaway? Yeah, let's order. & so on & so on & so on.

It was quite hot, even though I doubled the quantities but halved the chilli. So next time I make this - and I will, later this week - I'm going to leave out the chilli altogether, thicken the sauce with a little cornflour, add a few vegetables a la Chinese takeaway. And make an egg fried rice to go with it.


PS if you make this, don't panic when you add the pork - it seems as if there's no sauce at all, but there is, as the sugar melts down. It's delicious. Just don't be tempted to add red food colouring.

PPS I made it with lean pork, much nicer. And I left out the boiling stage, with no discernable difference to the finished dish.

Parsnip puree

Yesterday, just as Alfred's match was ending (very exciting, 22-26, in the dying minutes of the game they scored two tries and converted one to win), Eleanor telephoned from a supermarket. Just a quick call. How do you make those creamed parsnips? Eleanor. The daughter with no interest in food, who hasn't cooked anything to speak of since she stopped baking (very good) cakes aged about 10.

Even better, the first time she asks me for a recipe, it's in season - she may have no interest in food, but she knows what to eat when: how could she not? that's how we eat here. So gladdening to a mother's heart that early training is beginning to pay off!

As the jubilant applause died down, I gave her the full-fat Jane Grigson version, not the equally delicious low-fat adaptation, which is more properly called a parsnip puree. I thought we should celebrate this milestone in style.

Speaking of milestones, my very feeble photograph shows Eleanor at her graduation ceremony earlier this week. Now she's applying for a Master's - I am SO proud of her.

Lunch for Jean

We had a lovely lunch for about 60 friends and family yesterday as a memorial for Lucius's aunt, who died last month at a great age at her home in South Africa. The party was given by Lucius's cousin Bruce and his wife Menna, and the cooking was by their younger daughter Anna, who used to be a party designer (I think that's the right word) at the Admirable Crichton, and is now a freelance cook and party organiser.























We spent a merry morning preparing .... tidying, moving furniture, moving cars to make it easier for guests to park, cooking under instruction from Anna - and endlessly discussing how many potatoes and green beans would be required.























Here are my sons preparing smoked salmon which was sent down by courier from Uig Lodge on the west coast of Lewis in the Hebrides. It was, quite simply, the best smoked salmon I've ever tasted - smokey, and not a trace of the oil which often swamps even some of the better smoked salmon I've bought in the past.

We had a number of very delicious salads ... here's finely-sliced celeriac sitting in a bath of orange juice to stop it browning. Anna used orange juice because the salad had oranges in it - useful to know that it works just as well as lemon juice.


































One of the most popular dishes was Jean's famous pink fish ... which will be the subject of a separate post later in the week.














I failed to take a photograph of the main dish, a South African lamb and potato stew, or of the green bean salad which we dressed with olive oil, lemon juice and a huge quantity of toasted almond slivers - a delicious combination. This is my favourite photograph of the day: Robbie Honey, the florist, ladling stew from the pot into a dish, using a saucepan as the ladle:























And here are Robbie's beautiful flowers gracing the dining room table, surrounded by a sea of grey-green leaves:























This is Anna's passionfruit tart ... fabulous, isn't it? Also very delicious ... and she rustled up the last one in moments between sorting out salads, chopping vegetables and cheerfully (& with great charm) telling us all what to do next.

That's enough roast potatoes

We're having three parties this weekend, lunch for 120 on Saturday, lunch for 100 on Sunday, and then the young are having a dance on Sunday evening. So I'm busy. Lettice cooked dinner last night ... yet more roast potatoes (some people have had them three nights in a row this week), with roast chicken. Also roasted peppers and onions, stewed mushrooms, and a salad. Delicious. Lettice cooks her roasties in a conventional manner, no funny shapes, no holes, no bacon - and they were perfect. I only had one, because (whisper it gently) I'm getting rather fed up with them. Horatio ate dozens.

I got up early early this morning and drove to Covent Garden flower market to buy flowers for the marquee. Only as I was driving home did I realise that virtually all the flowers I had bought were scented ... lilies, lavender, tobacco, stocks. Sunflowers were the only exception, because I couldn't resist them. They're in buckets of water now, and I'll arrange them tomorrow, nothing too fancy, just one type of flower (one colour in the case of the stocks).

It's the first time I've ever handed the food over to a caterer, a very special lady called Jenny. We're having cold meats, salmon, tarts, with salad and hot potatoes, because Lucius always wants hot potatoes. Then soft fruit for pudding. Samphire with the salmon if we can find it. I'll keep you posted, and try to get a couple of the tart recipes from Jenny, as they sound wonderful. Sunday night the organic farmer who comes to the Henley farmers' market is doing a pig roast.

I'm off to buy yet more beer for the boys ... in the mean time, here are the flowers:

The Roast Potato Taste Test

Dinner was at 10.30 last night, so we just got on and ate it. Despite the lack of a blindfold, we compared roast potato cutting techniques, and came up with a surprise conclusion.

In fact, there are a couple of surprises here, for all those people who think, as I do, that the perfect roast potato is made by parboiling, then shaking before adding oil. You'll be thrilled to hear that you do not actually have to model the Eiffel Tower (see picture below of Horatio with his piece de resistance). But, amazingly, we did find it was worth making a hole through the potato (for example, when you've made a flower-shaped roastie to please your mother) ... because the potato taste shines through with a sweetness that was unmistakable and remarked on separately by all those who were lucky enough to get a holey one. There was a lot of talking and not much listening going on, so you can be sure that each person who noticed this was forming his/her own judgement. We used that acme of roasting potatoes, the King Edward.

The other surprise has ended a running battle in this house, and I have lost. Whenever Lucius makes roast potatoes (he is occasionally cornered into this by the demands of family life), he drapes them in - bacon. If I notice this happening, I always say that the potatoes will be soggy, and will not go crisp. Up until now, I have been right. But the boys have found that this has nothing whatever to do with the bacon and everything to do with the oven temperature. Which should be very hot. Obviously. But I'm going to have one last defiant skirmish - if you drape the potatoes in bacon (it's better than olive oil, mum - only I notice he used olive oil as well) then you get little crumbs of completely hard, slightly burnt (and not very nice) bacon every so often.

In the end, everyone was allowed to contribute two sentences to sum up. You may therefore find some of the punctuation a little peculiar. I'm giving the comments in the order they were made.

Alfred: The best roast potatoes ever, the most fun to eat. It's like a funfair in your mouth. Modest boy.

Lucius: They were very good, but we're having them with salmon and no gravy which made comparisons difficult. They were very crispy. This is not a normal menu in this house, but the shopping had been done by the time the tasting was found to be imperative.

Lettice: They were a bit burnt. Too many different sizes, so I'm eating burn and I don't like the taste of burn (H: "extraordinary, I love it"), in a way they're a bit too crispy, they've got a shell.

Horatio was rather nettled by this last comment; his original stance was a good chef never comments, however sibling rivalry prevailed:

Horatio: I aimed for a pork scratching. The bottom half of the Eiffel Tower was excellent, but as oxygen thinned, taste decreased. What he means is that the fat bit at the bottom was just about edible, but even the dogs wouldn't eat the thin bit at the top.

It was generally agreed that the experiment would have been more successful if the trimmings from all that carving had been cooked separately, both as they boiled and as they roasted. (Please note the ingrained dislike of food waste, this was a fine maternal hour.) It was also generally agreed that further work on this might have to be done this week. Perhaps not with salmon next time.

PS my favourite roast potatoes are completely different ... whole new potatoes, the smaller the better, roasted from raw with the entire contents of a tin of anchovies in olive oil. Fabulous. Known as girlie roast potatoes in this house, because Eleanor, Lettice and I love them, whereas the chaps all see it as a waste of an opportunity to have "real" roasties. Covered in bacon.

Roast potatoes: a question

Lunch today with Horatio, Lettice and Alfred, always a pleasure. The talk turned to roast potatoes, a great favourite in this house, particularly among the blokes. Last night, while I was out watching Lettice play hockey (her team won 7-0 and are now in the semi-final), Horatio and Alfred made roast potatoes out of the three spuds they found in the bottom of the veg box. This took them most of the evening, and they'd only just finished eating them when we got home at 10.20.

Men - at least the ones in my house - have a completely different take on cooking ... it seems to be a sort of running science experiment. And so, this lunchtime, the conversation went like this: We know they always get crisp on the bottom, so we have to decide how to get them crispier on the top. The sharp bits get the crispiest, so we need to cut them. Triangles would be best. No pyramids. Castles. I told them that the usual method is to shake them vigorously in the colander once you've drained them, to rough them up.

So tonight's plan is for competitive roastie-making: each of them to cut the potatoes into their chosen shape, cook those, and to shake one or two of each shape. We may have to taste them blind. Dinner may not be on the table until midnight. There will be much laughter. And they will mind - very much - who wins. As I am not cooking, I will take photographs.

Just as well I bought a large bag of King Edwards this morning.

Oh and my question is: how do YOU make your roast potatoes crunchy?

Happy Birthday, Eleanor

21 years ago today, my first child, Eleanor, was born. A beautiful baby, and now - so quickly - a beautiful young woman.

















We were - are - such proud parents ... I had never seen such a beautiful baby, and Lucius brought his office home and set up his computer in the garden so that he could work alongside the two of us in the startling heat of that June.

Now, 21 and just finished at university, awaiting the result of her degree, her life is before her ... good luck, darling girl - and MANY HAPPY RETURNS OF THE DAY!