Cruchade

It snowed last night. Wet snow, the sort that doesn't usually settle, especially in Oxfordshire in October. I don't ever remember snow here in autumn, although someone said that the last time it happened was 38 years ago, so I probably should. Didn't think it would still be on the ground this morning, but it was: frozen and crunchy underfoot in the bright dripping sunshine.























The book I am reading tempted me to linger a little under the duvet ... The Rose Grower, by Michelle de Kretser, an almost poetic evocation of life and love during the French revolution. With roses. And food.

It was in December, thinks Saint-Pierre, two or three days before Christmas. He remembers opening a window and the way a line of snow collapsed inwards, onto the ledge; but that might have been on another occasion. He had stood on one foot beside his grandmother, leaning against this very table, and she showed him how to make cruchade. Half a century later, he still finds himself craving its warm, sweet blandness.

His older daughters wrinkle their noses at it, but his grandson loves cruchade and Mathilde is not altogether immune. A dish for children and old men. A winter dish, unsuited to high summer. But Berthe would of course have served it at dinner, if he'd asked. He didn't, for three reasons: he takes pleasure in preparing it himself; he believes his version superior to Berthe's; he doesn't want to have to share.

The mixture of maize flour, milk and a little butter has cooked slowly, thickening to the right consistency. He turns it out onto a linen cloth and blows on it, willing it to cool faster.

The night house sighs and shifts. Then settles itself, groaning. Through the kitchen window he can see a lopsided white moon.

... There is no armagnac to be found, so Saint-Pierre pours out a glass of Berthe's plum brandy. He can't resist breaking off a corner of the solidifying cruchade. His eyebrows twitch in anticipation.

... So Saint-Pierre can't lay his hands on any sugar - really, where does Berthe squirrel these things away? - but a pot of her apricot jam from the previous summer will do just as well. In fact, he prefers jam. With the point of a knife, he draws a diamond grid on the surface of the cruchade; then he cuts along the lines.

... He begins frying. The butter sizzles .. Saint-Pierre is wielding a slotted spoon, lifting the golden-yellow diamonds onto a plate .. a thick layer of apricot jam is spread on the cruchade.

"It's an old regional dish." Saint-Pierre holds out the plate. "Not to everyone's taste," he says hopefully. "Try a small piece."

"Delicious."

Saint-Pierre sighs.

Cruchade is said to be a Gascon treat, but I can't find any trace of it on the web or in a book, not even in Elizabeth David or the magisterial Oxford Companion to Food. It sounds like a variation of polenta - worth trying if you have a sweet tooth.


I'm sending this post to The Food Quote Challenge at a new-ish blog called Almond and the Hazelnut .... the idea is to post food writing from a non-food book - Yasmin announced this challenge a couple of days ago, and then this passage from The Rose Grower shouted out at me. The deadline for the food quote challenge is November 25th. And if anyone knows any more about cruchade, I'd love to hear from them.

The whole world's sap is sunk

The shortest day. Not even eight hours of light here - sunrise (not that you could see it through this morning's blanket of cloud) was just after eight o'clock, and the sun will set at 10 to four. The world turns today ... and tomorrow there will be a little little more light, perhaps only a minute - even that is something to celebrate.

This poem by Donne catches the mood exactly ... if you don't like poetry, just read the first five lines, which describe so precisely the state of nature at this time of year. Just one thing, though: it's not Lucie's day any more, the calendar was reformed (Give us back our eleven days) in 1752 (in England & the eastern seaboard of America). I've just looked up the details of the switch from the muddles of the Julian calendar to the modernity of the Gregorian calendar which we all now use, and it's fascinating how long it took some countries to make the change ... Russian atheletes arrived two weeks late for the 1900 Olympic Games in Paris, for instance. Don't you just LOVE Wikipaedia?

I'm going to cook spiced clementines according to Giorgio Novelli's mother's recipe, to bring a bit of sunshine into the house. Recipe and photos later.











A Nocture upon St Lucie's Day, being the shortest day
by John Donne

'TIS the year's midnight, and it is the day's,
Lucie's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks;
The sun is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rays;
The world's whole sap is sunk;
The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the bed's-feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr'd; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compared with me, who am their epitaph.

Study me then, you who shall lovers be
At the next world, that is, at the next spring;
For I am every dead thing,
In whom Love wrought new alchemy.
For his art did express
A quintessence even from nothingness,
From dull privations, and lean emptiness;
He ruin'd me, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darkness, death—things which are not.

All others, from all things, draw all that's good,
Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have;
I, by Love's limbec, am the grave
Of all, that's nothing. Oft a flood
Have we two wept, and so
Drown'd the whole world, us two; oft did we grow,
To be two chaoses, when we did show
Care to aught else; and often absences
Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.

But I am by her death — which word wrongs her —
Of the first nothing the elixir grown;
Were I a man, that I were one
I needs must know; I should prefer,
If I were any beast,
Some ends, some means; yea plants, yea stones detest,
And love; all, all some properties invest.
If I an ordinary nothing were,
As shadow, a light, and body must be here.

But I am none; nor will my sun renew.
You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun
At this time to the Goat is run
To fetch new lust, and give it you,
Enjoy your summer all,
Since she enjoys her long night's festival.
Let me prepare towards her, and let me call
This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this
Both the year's and the day's deep midnight is.

HotM: a cure for depression

I'm not very good at pudding, dessert, call it what you will. It's a hit or miss affair in this house, usually forgotten in the rush to get dinner on the table. There's always fruit, often a square of dark chocolate. And this is the reason I haven't done much posting this week: I wanted to post some more pudding ideas for the second Heart of the Matter event, but found myself strangely devoid of them ... so no posts, & not much "proper" cooking either.

I'm reading a wonderful book at the moment, Honey from a Weed, by Patience Gray. This morning it struck me that PG wasn't keen on pudding either. In a hefty book (380pps), there's only one chapter on puddings, entitled A few sweets. Seven, actually. The few conserves are all savoury (several ways of preserving tomatoes, lots of ways to conserve a variety of vegetables in oil). There's a lovely chapter on jams which I'll definitely be using later this summer - figs, peaches, green walnuts. But overall this is not a book for the sweet-toothed.

I'm always easily distracted, and this week's distraction from pudding posts was finding PG's reference to Virgil's sauce for cauliflower. It's a sort of mayonnaise, with garlic, anchovies, capers, breadcrumbs. PG claims that "even Provencal cooks" agree that Virgil invented aioli. This seems to me so incredible that I spent several hours looking into it, with huge lack of success, partly because in the US there's a brand of barbecue sauce called Virgil's sauce which clutters up any search, no matter how cleverly worded.

"The origin of aioli is often attributed to Virgil, even by Provencal cooks. According to the story, one day, having lost his appetite, he was advised to restore it by crushing some cloves of garlic and mixing the resulting paste with breadcrumbs. It had the desired effect, as anyone in a similar condition can prove - providing they have a pestle and mortar. Pounding fragrant things - particularly garlic, basil, parsley - is a tremendous antidote to depression. But it applies also to juniper berries, coriander seeds and the grilled fruits of the chilli pepper. Pounding these things produces an alteration in one's being - from sighing with fatigue to inhaling with pleasure. The cheering effects of herbs and alliums cannot be too often reiterated. Virgil's appetite was probably improved equally by pounding garlic as by eating it."

Well, the Virgil bit seems to me to be fanciful, but the rest, the pounding, seems to me to be true. The very best cup of coffee I ever had was in the Eritrean highlands (where coffee originated), pounded in a mortar with a wooden pestle by a nomad woman with the most enormous smile, even though we were in a war zone and her life was undoubtedly materially affected by the war.

I once read that the two most intimidating cookery terms are bain marie and pestle and mortar. Well, a bain marie is just a dish of water, and a pestle and mortar is what we gave up using when we got food processors. The only thing I use mine for is crushing pepper and other spices, when I want them to be chunky. Clearly it's time to make Virgil sauce in the traditional manner. Watch this space.

We've come a long way from pudding. I've been sent lots of wonderful ideas which I'll post next week in the round-up. Please send more ... as you can see, my family and friends are deprived (and many of them kindly bring their own when they come - notably Anna, who made four of the best-ever tarts for Easter: lemon, almond with prune, chocolate with pear, and white chocolate with raspberries).

The Heart of the Matter deadline is this Sunday, 22nd April - send them to joannacary AT ukonline DOT co DOT uk, with the permalink for the round-up next week, which you'll find here, and also at the Heart of the Matter website.

Do you heat your plates?

When Lucius and I were engaged, we spent a lot of time in the car, driving between our - then - two houses in Bristol and Henley-on-Thames, and also visiting friends and relations. It was in the days when not all cars had radios, and few people - certainly not us - had tape machines. So I read to Lucius as we drove. We got through a number of books while it lasted - we gave up the habit when our first child was born.

One of the best books was Coningsby, a novel by Disraeli, the 19th century British statesman. It is fair to say that I might well not have finished this if I had been reading it by myself, but it's not really an option to give up half way through a book you are sharing with someone else. And it is very rewarding, full of jokes and observations about life - and also full of food: great banquets, intimate dinners, sly digs. And the story - love, ambition, power - goes at a cracking pace.

Disraeli was once at a tedious great dinner where he was served champagne between courses: "Thank God for something warm," he famously said. Here's an extract from Coningsby, published in 1844, which puts me to shame, because I often forget to warm the plates.

Lord Monmouth's dinners at Paris were celebrated. It was generally agreed that they had no rivals; yet there were others who had as skilful cooks, others who, for such a purpose, were equally profuse in their expenditure. What, then, was the secret spell of his success? The simplest in the world, though no one seemed aware of it. His Lordship's plates were always hot; whereas at Paris, in the best appointed houses, and at dinners which, for costly materials and admirable art in their preparation, cannot be surpassed, the effect is always considerably lessened, and by a mode the most mortifying: by the mere circumstance that every one at a French dinner is served on a cold plate.

(He goes on to say that the reason for this is that French plates are made of inferior pottery, rather than the superior China of English plates, and suggests that there would be gastronomic improvements (not to mention commercial advantages) on both sides of the Channel if we sold the French plates, and they sold us their capital wines.)

So, do YOU warm your plates?

Fate cannot harm me, I have dined today

It was Sydney Smith who famously said that his idea of heaven was eating pate de foie gras to the sound of trumpets - you feel he might have been a bit of a foodie. So when I came across his recipe for salad dressing, it was irresistible.

A RECIPE FOR A SALAD

To make this condiment, your poet begs
The pounded yellow of two hard-boiled eggs;
Two boiled potatoes, passed through kitchen sieve,
Smoothness and softness to the salad give.

Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl,
And, half suspected, animate the whole.
Of mordant mustard add a single spoon,
Distrust the condiment that bites so soon;
But deem it not, thou man of herbs, a fault,
To add a double quantity of salt.

Four times the spoon with oil from Lucca brown,
And twice with vinegar procured from town;
And, lastly, o'er the flavored compound toss
A magic soupcion of anchovy sauce.

O, green and glorious! O herbaceous treat!
'T would tempt the dying anchorite to eat:
Back to the world he'd turn his fleeting soul,
And plunge his fingers in the salad bowl!
Serenely full, the epicure would say,
"Fate cannot harm me, I have dined to-day."

Sydney Smith (1771–1845)



I'm sure I'm not the first person to try to make this salad according to the poet's instructions, but I think I may be the first to try from a version of the poem missing the lines about oil and vinegar. It was so stiff I had to let it down with some oil, although I didn't use vinegar. And I used tinned anchovies rather than anchovy sauce (because I didn't have any). Later, when I went shopping, I checked the ingredients on the bottled anchovy sauce, and thought that whole anchovies were a better bet: well, would you choose to cook with xanthan gum? No wonder it was suspiciously cheap compared to a tin of anchovies.


Smith's salad for four

Peel and boil one small floury potato. At the same time, hard boil two eggs. When both are cooked and cooled, whizz the potatoes, egg yolks with half a 50g tin of anchovies, a splash of red wine vinegar, and as much olive oil as is needed to let it down. Do not, pace Smith, use salt, as the anchovies will provide all that you need.










In the mean time, put salad leaves onto four plates, sprinkle with a little finely chopped shallot (or red onion), add sliced avocado. Pour on the dressing.

You will see from the photograph of the finished dish, that ours was still rather solid, as I used a large potato, no vinegar and not enough oil. Even so, it was really delicious, a recipe that deserves a revival. Smith's salad is filling, a meal in itself (rather in the manner of a Caesar salad), and one that will keep you going for hours.