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.

Salad easy

Don't you just hate those ruinous supermarket pillows of salad that taste faintly of swimming pool? At the risk of turning this blog into an edition of Gardener's World, I'm going to tell you how to free yourself of them forever, a really easy way. I've got a garden and a greenhouse, but I'm pretty sure you could do this on a sunny windowsill, too. We've been picking and eating salad through the winter - and the only actual gardening I did (apart from the occasional sprinkle with water) was to sow the seeds in the autumn. Now that it's warming up and the days are getting longer, we can barely eat up with the growth.

The secret is to grow plants which are "cut and come again" - in other words, salad leaves rather than entire lettuces. So you go out with your colander, and choose the exact leaves you want, rather than pulling up a huge lettuce with lots of nasty outer leaves you're going to have to chuck. And you pick them regularly - daily at this time of year, weekly in the dark of winter - so you only ever have luscious young leaves, the sort celebrity chefs know how to charge for.

The varieties you are looking for are rocket, mizuna (lovely peppery taste), mustards, cresses. They're often sold in mixes called things like Saladisi, and theyre a good way to start, because you are growing your very own bowl of mixed salad, and because you get to know which ones you like best, and because it's cheaper. Some mixes are recommended for winter, some for summer, but most of them will grow year round.

You need to sow them at intervals during the year: out of doors, now (by which I mean any time in the next six weeks), and again a couple of months later. Indoors, for a winter crop, you really need to get the seed in the ground in September, and the earlier you do it, the stronger your winter crop will be. The indoor crop could be in a grow-bag in a greenhouse, or perhaps in a wine box on a balcony (perhaps covered, cloche-style, with fleece, or plastic, or perspex), or in a large pot on a windowsill. Whatever, just water and pick, water and pick. And eat, of course.

I sprinkle them in rows (so I can tell them apart from the weeds), and I don't bother to cover them, although I may just stroke the soil lightly. Keep them watered (you really do need to use a fine sprinkler head, but you don't actually need a watering can for this, you can use a special head on an old plastic bottle).

Yesterday, I sowed the first outdoor seed, in an old zinc bath outside the kitchen door (I often find myself picking in the dark), covered over with an old door scraper to keep off the pigeons. I expect we'll be able to start picking these in mid to late April, depending on the weather, by which time the plants in my greenhouse will be exhausted and fading.

We were lucky

In July 2004, we set off on our summer holidays, the car laden, as usual, with sports kit - tennis racquets, golf bags, fishing rods, walking gear, several changes of footwear each: everything that was needed for the usual active family holiday. We drove to Scotland, stopping on the way to visit friends, where we would be staying with several other families from our wider family in a huge 18th century mansion in Angus, before going to to visit good friends on the island of Mull.

We both really needed a holiday: Lucius had an issue at work which made his shoulders hunch up with tension whenever he talked about it. I was embroiled in an unpleasant spat with our village council, and the first of our four children was about to go to university which would mean change for the family (this was the first family holiday which didn't include everyone). The children were happy in the back of the car, surrounded by stuff, and plugged in to their music.

We were the last to arrive: everyone was on the terrace overlooking the River North Esk having drinks in the early evening sunshine. We joined them, had dinner, and then went to find our rooms, Lettice sharing with her cousin, the boys together in the room next to ours. There was chatter and laughter, it was good to be surrounded by family; there was the promise of a whole week of activity and exploration in this beautiful place in the foothills of the highlands. Plans were made for golf the next morning, and for a group of us to visit Glamis Castle nearby.

I remember that on the way to Glamis we talked about illness, we talked about how it would affect us, we talked about cancer, everyone's fear. But, looking back, we didn't really address it, we talked about it as something that would affect other people. Despite our increasing middle age, we still felt invincible, whatever evidence there was to the contrary, and however much we knew it wasn't so.

All that confidence was shattered within moments of returning to The Burn. Lucius was playing tennis with Horatio - no longer a gentle game of adult v child, but now, a game between two males who both wanted to win, one improving every day, the other wanting to carry on unbeaten as long as he could.

"Joanna, Joanna! Lucius has come in and he's lying on the sofa and he's not very well." As soon as I saw him, I could see that something was really wrong. He was grey. He looked weak, he looked wounded. I went to the office to see if we could telephone a doctor, but the surgery was closing, and it was difficult. James, my brother-in-law, and an orthopaedic consultant, took one look and said we should take him to the nearest A&E. So off we went.

Lucius's brother Chippy drove, in his brand-new car that was not yet properly run in. James sat in the front, telephoning the emergency services to find out where to go, and whether an ambulance could meet us. No. So he talked to the hospital direct. All this in a low voice in the front. Lucius was lying across the seats at the back, his head in my lap - clammy, silent, sick.

It was an hour's drive to Dundee. We had to drive through the city, one we didn't know, and with confusing signposts. All the time, James was talking to the hospital, taking a pulse every so often. Lucius groaned, James turned to examine him in the confined space, whispered to Chippy, and suddenly, the car, already going at speed, shot forward.

"Please be alive when we arrive at the hospital, please be alive when we arrive, please be alive when we arrive ..." I couldn't stroke him, he didn't want to be touched; I couldn't talk to him, he was turned in on himself. I bit my tongue - literally, to stop myself from crying - and repeated my mantra in my head: "please be alive when we arrive."

When we got there, he was bundled into a wheelchair and rushed in to the cardiac unit. I was directed to the front desk, where a smiling Scots lady asked for his name, and I burst into tears. "It's all right, lassie, it's all right," she soothed. It was the first of many small acts of kindness of strangers.

After an eternal little while, the doctor came to find us, to tell us what had happened, but, also, to get my permission to use heavy-duty drug treatment. He talked that medical language that the healthy never learn. "So, does that mean he's had a heart attack?" He looked surprised. He explained again, only this time I understood. A clot had come to rest in Lucius's heart, luckily for him in a place where damage tended to be less; luckily for him, he lay down more or less immediately; luckily for him, he was in the cardiac unit within a couple of hours.

We didn't see him until after he had taken the clot-buster. He was in a high-tech chair, wired up to the nines, still grey, still wounded, but smiling weakly, beginning to look out again. We went home after he was settled onto the high-dependency ward, where staff outnumber patients, and where patience and kindness are everyday virtues.

It was a bad moment, telling the children. It was worst for Horatio - he couldn't believe it was serious: "Mum, he just said he wanted to stop playing because he felt sick, and then he collected up all the balls." So H had wandered off to find another tennis partner, and never gave the matter another thought. It's not like the movies - it's not even how you imagined it would be.

He stayed in hospital a week, champing at the bit by the end, longing to get back to his life. But he wasn't allowed to go to Mull, for fear of another attack, and he wasn't allowed to drive for a month. Every day he got stronger, but not as quickly as he wanted to believe. Now you would never know. We were lucky. We were very lucky.

...

We were in shock. How could this happen to my virile, averagely fit, strong husband? We got answers from the British Heart Foundation. You know them, too: smoking, high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, lack of activity, stress, heredity.

We needed to DO something. We both read the BHF booklets:

People who eat at least five portions of fruit and vegetables a day are less likely to have heart disease. We do not know exactly why, but it is thought to be due to the antioxidant vitamins they contain ... there is not yet enough evidence that taking vitamin tablets has the same effect.

Eating oily fish once or twice a week may help to reduce your level of triglycerides (fatty substances found in the blood), and prevent blood clots from forming in your coronary arteries. It can also help to improve your chances of survival after a heart attack. The particular oil in fish that has these beneficial effects is known as 'omega-3'. It is found mainly in oily fish such as herring, kippers, mackerel, pilchards, sardines, salmon, fresh tuna, trout and anchovies.

Well, wouldn't you give it a try? In practice, we were doing quite a bit of it anyway, but, as we looked carefully at the advice, we could see that changes were needed.

Five portions of fruit and veg a day is the most effective change you can make. If you only make one change, this should be it. Lots of people say they don't know how much there is in a portion. Well, it's one apple, or banana, or orange; it's two clementines, two Kiwi fruit. It's a slice of melon, a cup of berries. It's two or three tablespoons of fruit salad or stewed fruit. It's a small bowl of salad, a couple of serving spoons of veg. Just eat more, and keep on eating them!

Eat less fat overall, and cut right down on saturated fat. So butter, hard cheese, lard, suet - all obvious no-noes. Ghee, too, if you're keen on Indian food. But also coconut oil and palm oil - and these are used extensively in industrially processed food. So: read the labels. Welcome monounsaturates (olive oil, walnut oil, avocado), polyunsaturates (sunflower oil, soya oil, fish oils), omega-3 fats (oily fish, walnuts, soya).

Keep a healthy weight. I struggle with this. Although this way of eating helps, it is not a slimming diet in itself. Kalyn has inspired me to explore the South Beach Diet, and I'll post on how that goes. The BHF recommends checking by measuring your waist - anything over 32" is bad, over 35" very bad.

Cut down on salt. There's a strong connection between high consumption of salt and high blood pressure. There's a HUGE amount of salt in industrial food, although things are beginning to improve. Read the labels. Better still, make your own food; don't add salt, you'll get all you need from the processed food you do buy.

Watch out for hidden fats and salt. Here are the daily guidelines (men first, women second): fats 95g/70g (less than a third should be saturated); sugars 70g/50g; fibre 20g/16g; salt 6g/5g.



It's forever and it works. So don't beat yourself up when you backslide, and remember the 80/20 rule - if you get it right four-fifths of the time, that's fine. Enjoy. And then, please, share your recipes with the rest of us.


How The Heart of the Matter works: The first theme is going to be Finger Food, we thought that it would be perfect for the 'introduction party' of this event. The last day to send your entry is the 22 of March (this month, send it to i_beretta AT yahoo DOT it), please remember to link here and that we want only one-event entries.

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!

Affordable superfoods

Superfoods: it's a daft idea, really, especially with all those newspaper scares that generally accompany them. But they don't have to be expensive (blueberries), ecologically unsound (summer fruit in winter), impossible to pronounce (quinoa), or otherwise exotic. Here's a list (not exhaustive, just to get you going) of healthy heart superfoods which are delicious, cheap, plentiful, and won't cost the earth:

* dark green cabbage / spinach
* lentils, any colour
* herrings / kippers
* carrots
* porridge
* onions
* pumpkin
* black tea
* plain unsweetened yoghurt
* dark chocolate

Soon you can add a couple of other readily available items to that list:

* tomatoes
* berries

... but not until they don't have to be air-freighted here.

My complete list (excluding any mention of quinoa) was posted when I began this blog in May 2005.

A lot of our superfoods come from Riverford in a veg box. Recommended, because a veg box forces you to think of vegetables first, make them centre stage (as in, "what shall we have with the pumpkin?" or "how shall we cook our onions tonight?"). No need if you live near a really good market, and use it regularly. But there's something about a veg box which forces creativity on you, and the Riverford produce tastes good better best!

A good beef stew with thyme and anchovy

I made this yesterday for Lucius and some American friends of his who were coming to supper. It had to be easy, because I was off to my beekeeping class (this year's project), so Lucius had to dish it up, when he'd much rather be chatting than worrying about food. The idea was to make double rations, so that there would be plenty to freeze, but it was so good that there's not much left. This stew is strongly flavoured.

Chop three large onions and sweat in a little olive oil. Add one kilo of diced stewing steak. Turn up the heat and brown. Add a dash of wine (I used port, because there was some around). Shake in some flour (about a tablespoonful). Add all the contents of a tin of anchovies (chop them first if you like, but they'll melt away to nothing. Add four sliced carrots.Stir in a finely chopped sprig of thyme (my sprig was very big, to go with the strong flavour given by the anchovy). Add liquid (I used chicken stock and some water) to just cover. Bring to the boil, then simmer gently for an hour or two, depending on the cut and size of the meat.

Served with baked potatoes, cauliflower bake, and a tomato salad. I ate it lukewarm when I got back from beekeeping (we discussed the diseases of bees, which are many and varied). It would be good with a little orange zest grated into it (or a strip of orange peel added at the beginning and fished out before serving).

Spring is sprung!

We've had a lot of rain recently ... this was the view from my kitchen window most of last week.













I could only console myself with the thought that the flower buds were swelling ...










... and now the sun is shining, the days are getting longer, the flowers are blooming - it's SPRING!

Red onion marmalade

This is a sort of chutney, easy to make, very useful to have in the cupboard. It takes quite a while to boil down, but it's worth the wait, and you only have to watch it at the end, when you want to stop cooking just as it's about to catch.

The idea came from a note that's been on my desk for weeks: red onions/sugar/red wine/vinegar/port. And that's all it is. (I don't remember how I came to write the note, but was probably inspired by one blog or another, as that's where most of my cooking inspiration comes from these days, so apologies if it looks as if I've pinched someone else's idea: get in touch and I'll set up a link!)

1. Chop one kilo of red onions and sweat in olive oil

2. Add 300g muscovado sugar

3. Add one bottle of red wine (I used very cheap, probably undrinkable Rioja), 150ml port, and 250 ml sherry vinegar

4. Cook until all the liquid is absorbed

5. Bottle

6. Enjoy!

And the moon was eclipsed by the earth ...

These photographs aren't mine, sad to say. There are more, too. My attempts at night photography were doomed by incompetence: at dusk, I went out and photographed the rising moon. Then I went in to find my tripod. I turned the house upside down, but couldn't find it, so all my photos were taken with a little camera that flashes at night, no matter how much you change the settings.

It was a wonderful clear night, and the moon shone in her own colours for a brief time. Here is the full moon rising, over my veg patch ..

Marmalade

It's a bit late in the season to be writing about making marmalade, because you'd be lucky to find any Seville oranges at all now (although there were still a few around last week). However, I had a spectacular disaster in January, and have only just now got round to starting again. And it has turned out to be the best marmalade I've ever made, so I'm writing down what I did in the hope that I'll be able to do it again next year!

January's disaster nearly burnt the house down - I put 4.5 kilos of Seville oranges into my biggest pan, covered them with water and put them on to boil. The idea was to bring them to the boil, put the lid on the pan, and cook the oranges slowly in a very low oven all day, so that I could finish the marmalade in the evening when I came back from a visit to Bath. Unfortunately, I forgot the second part, drove to Reading, caught the train, arrived an hour later, drove to Rosie and Stephen's, and had finished lunch when I suddenly remembered the oranges on the top of the stove. I rang Amy, who lives two villages away and who has a key to the house, and she nobly went out to the rescue (it was the day of the big storm which blew over several of our trees). By the time she got there, there was an inch of black stuff at the bottom of the pan. It took nearly a week of soaking then scrubbing to get the pan back to normal!

This time I boiled 2 kg of Seville oranges in 2 litres of water; they bubbled away for about an hour, and towards the end of the cooking time I topped up the water (from the kettle, so as not to slow down the process). I left this to cool overnight.

Next day, I scooped out the oranges and drained them in a colander over the pan, and pulled them in half. I scraped the flesh (there's not much in a Seville) and pips, which I added to the liquid. I boiled this up for about five minutes. Meanwhile, I sliced the orange skins in the Magimix, which gave a pleasing variety - some huge slices, some tiny, and many in between.

Then I strained the liquid, and added 3kg of sugar (the special sort for marmalade-making, although ordinary sugar works just as well, because of all the pectin in the pips). When it was dissolved (over a low heat), I added the peel, brought the mixture up to a boil, and then boiled it hard for not quite 10 minutes, until it had been at the "jam" setting on my sugar thermometer for a couple of minutes.

I left it to cool for about 10 minutes before bottling it, which allowed the foam to subside completely.

Perfect set, not too hard, but not runny, either.

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).

Nearly full moon ...

... and tomorrow there's a total eclipse of the moon, one of the most beautiful natural wonders of the world. Last night, Lucius and I had an unresolvable debate about which is more beautiful, a solar or a lunar eclipse. A solar eclipse is awe-inspiring and exhilerating - celestial fireworks. A lunar eclipse is a gentler experience: the first time I saw one I was surprised that the moon was still visible at totality, I thought it would be impossible to see. Instead, it was the moon as I'd never seen it before: commanding, red, magnificent. I can't wait. Full contact starts at about 10.45 Saturday night, and carries on until just before midnight.

Here's some techie stuff from the BBC:


The almost-full Moon will rise in the E at 17:29 UT (same as GMT) on Saturday 3 March and will climb steeply to 25° high into the ESE by 20:18, when the Earth's shadow will just touch the leftmost edge of the Moon ("first contact"). You might have "has it? / hasn't it?" doubts for some time, as first contact can be difficult to spot because (a) this is the reasonably light "penumbral" shadow; and (b) the edge of the shadow is fuzzy, rather than sharp, so the transition is not very clear.

The area of the penumbra continues to grow until the Moon's face is totally in shadow. Then at 21:30, (second contact) the edge of the Moon will just touch the umbra. The penumbra/umbra transition will also be fuzzy, but it will soon become clear that the shadow is darkening, and at 22:44 the Moon's surface will be completely covered by the umbra. The Moon rarely disappears completely during totality, but it's difficult to forecast just how dark it will become. It will probably be somewhere between a light, glowing coppery red and a dark, brooding blood-red. Whatever happens though it should be spectacular and it's relatively easy to photograph.

The Moon will remain fully in the umbra until 23:57, will be fully in the penumbra at 01:11 UT on Sunday 4 March, and finally the eclipse will end at 02:24 with the Moon about 40° high in the SW.

And even more if you didn't quite get it (I don't really understand the science or mechanics, I just respond to the beauty and the romance).

Old English cookery

My friend DD rang this morning to ask if I could mind her shop for an hour while she popped out. Great - a good chance for a browse, as if I need any more books in this house. But I do ...

First was a paperback copy of Michael Smith's Fine English Cookery for £2. This is a real classic of English cookery, elegant English cookery before all those French cooks fled from revolutionary France and we got the taste for anglicised foreign cuisine. Jane Grigson says in the blurb: "He starts from the reasonable assumption that people who sat on Chippendale chairs in elegant houses were unlikely to be eating filthy food from their Wedgwood dinner services. Therefore what they ate is worth exploring." I can't wait to cook from it.

The second was a real bargain, £10 for an original 1814 copy of Elizabeth Raffald's The Experienced English Housekeeper, for the use and ease of Ladies, Housekeepers, Cooks &c, written purely from practice; dedicated to the Hon Lady Elizabeth Warburton, whom the Author lately served as Housekeeper; Consisting of several Hundred Original Receipts, most of which never appeared in print Great title, and one of the sources for Smith's book. It was a bit of a bestseller, and this copy (leather-bound and with the original owner's inked notes) is "A new edition, in which are inserted some celebrated receipts by other modern Authors"

It belonged to Elizabeth Cooper of Ox Close House, near Ripon, and when she died in 1859 it was given to her granddaughter Annie Harland. They both obviously used it a great deal, because the binding has been mended, and needs mending again. In the back, Annie has written a detailed instruction to take the stains out of flannel, which begins: rub with yolk of egg before washing.

The book falls open at the recipe "to preserve oranges carved", which turns out to be marmalade (topical, as I'm just making a batch of marmalade now). On the same page is a recipe for preserving quinces which will be useful in the autumn. Some of the recipes have charming names - bride cake for a wedding. Some sound dire but may well be worth pursuing: to make a peas soup for Lent, for which you need "blue boiling peas" - I can only suppose that she means Puy lentils, in which case, absolutely delicious with anchovies, onion, cloves, carrots, parnsips and a bunch of herbs.

And what about this? I'm posting it in its entirety:

To make a catchup to keep seven years. Take two quarts of the oldest strong beer you can get, put to it one quart of red wine, three quarters of a pound of anchovies, three ounces of shalots peeled; half an ounce of mace, the same of nutmegs; a quarter of an ounce of cloves, three large races of ginger cut in slices, boil it all together over a moderate fire till one third is wasted, the next day bottle it for use; it will carry to the East Indies.

Industrial quantities of a wonderfully flavoursome brew - but I suppose you would need them if you were sailing to the Far East with only barrels of rotting food to eat. I might work on reducing the quantities, because it sounds good (although I have no idea how you'd find out what is a race of ginger - trial and error, I suppose).

I am SO looking forward to confounding the idea that English cooking is, at best, dire, and, at worst, doesn't exist.

Birthday celebrations

A gathering of some of Lucius's longest-standing and closest friends demands something good to eat, something a little more than the everyday. On the other hand, Lucius likes best the food he always eats, so it's a dilemma. Or, perhaps, a compromise. Mostly it was good things we occasionally eat, plus one or two new ideas.

So, with our drinks we ate smoked salmon on brown bread, dusted with a little grated lemon zest as well as juice. We sat down to Elizabeth David's Prawn Paste, which sounds unappetizing but is a lovely delicately-flavoured light starter to eat with toast. Then we had fillet of beef, adapted from Nigella in How to Eat, which is a forgiving dish in terms of timing, and therefore worth knowing about - you get lovely rare beef even if you sit down half an hour later than planned. This we ate with little boiled potatoes and a huge green salad from the greenhouse. Then a very runny, not entirely successful but tasty Tiramisu from the Prue Leith Bible, because Lucius amazed us all by announcing that it was his favourite pudding. And good English cheeses from Riverford - Green's cheddar, double gloucester, and stilton. Followed by coffee with chocolates from Gorvett & Stone - a choice of either chilli (REALLY good, and with a serious kick) or mint.

Next morning, hot home-made bread with honeycomb given to Lucius by Andrew Ritchie, and this year's marmalade. Also lots of coffee.

Lunch was mass catering, with the arrival of lots more people, mostly family. We were 34 in the end (we'd been 14 for dinner). But all home-cooked - it's what we do to look after ourselves, so it's the least we can do when we invite people over. Chicken pieces, some cooked in honey and mustard (a huge favourite with the children), some in lemon juice and honey. Sausages (I didn't come over all Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall, I bought them in Waitrose, so ignore the boast above). Vicky made a salad with the leftover potatoes and some leaves from the greenhouse as there was no parsley in the house. I cooked carrot slices in orange juice, which sounds horrid but is a revelation once you've boiled the orange juice down to a sticky clinging sauce. There was another green salad (which I forgot to put the avocado into, so that we've got an avo mountain to get through this week!). Also boiled potatoes, because Lucius likes them hot at every opportunity. Puy lentils dressed in vinaigrette. Bread, cheeses.

Puddings were Pavlova dressed with very runny strawberry jam and yoghurt, pears in red wine, Claudia Roden's orange cake - and the blood orange jelly which I forgot and which is still sitting in my fridge! And then Huntswood birthday cake - three times the size of last week's, and with a lot more candles.

Fillet of beef

This is a wonderful recipe for a special evening - not least because you don't have to worry if things are running a little late. I'm posting it because two or three people asked me for the method on Saturday evening.

I've adapted this over the years, but the basic recipe and most of the method comes from Nigella Lawson's How to Eat. (The amounts given here are to serve eight; I doubled it for 14, and had plenty left over to add to Sunday's buffet lunch.)


You need a heavy pan that will fit two fillets without touching each other. I use a heavy roasting pan, but would like, one day, to buy a rectangular Le Creuset dish which would be the ideal.

Olive oil
Finely chopped shallots (or onions)
a good sprig of thyme
one head of garlic
one tin of anchovy fillets
two 750g fillets of beef
4 tbsp brandy (Marsala would do)
300ml good red wine

Slowly cook the onions. Just before they start to brown, add the chopped thyme and garlic, and, after a minute or two, the anchovies (and their oil). Once this is all amalgamated, push it to the ends of the tins, to make a space for the meat. Sear the fillets on all sides until they're brown. Add the brandy, bubble it up, then add the wine. Cover with a loose tent of tinfoil.

At this point, Nigella cooks the meat for 10 minutes on the hob, turns it over and cooks for a further five or ten minutes. She then rests the meat while she tidies up the sauce. She says you can get this far BEFORE THE FIRST COURSE.

On the other hand, I have an Aga, so after browning (and I do that very thoroughly) I put the meat in the "bottom oven" (85-100C) for at least half an hour. I have once or twice left it for an hour and it was still rare.

Cut into thick slices, lay in a heated serving dish, and spoon over some of the juice. Serve the rest in a jug.


Either way, it's a good-tempered dish.

Prawn paste

This comes from Elizabeth David's Christmas, an excellent little book I bought when it came out in 2003 (it was put together posthumously from pieces found amongst her papers). She was a little bah humbug about Christmas, so it's not a Delia style instruction manual for getting you through the big day with a huge turkey, all the trimmings and timings spelt out for you. It's more of a winter cookbook, although I use it all year round (and curse the binder every time I pull it off the shelf: the glue gave way the very first time I read it, and the pages are now coming out by the handful).

I pounced on this recipe as an alternative to potted shrimps, which Lucius loves, but no longer eats because of all that butter. I think this is much nicer, and certainly much more in tune with modern ideas on nutrition.


Blitz 250g cooked prawns, with some basil leaves (ED specifies dried; I use fresh whenever I can) and the juice of a lemon (I often put in the grated zest, too). Pepper, cayenne if you like, perhaps a little coriander seed. When it's smooth, slowly add olive oil - four two six tablespoons. Serve with toast.

Huntswood Birthday Cake

Yesterday, Lucius was 60. We had a very good time, as we persuaded him to take the day off, since Lettice and Alfred were both on half term. After breakfast we jumped into the car and went go-karting, which seemed a suitably silly thing to be doing on your 60th birthday. Very good fun - Alfred was instantly turned into Mr Toad, poop-pooping his way round the tortuous track, and Lettice flew past me several times, her golden hair flowing out from under the back of her helmet. I pootled round rather in the manner of Miss Marple driving a Morris Minor, and letting all the faster drivers (ie everyone else on the circuit) overtake me at the bends. Then a pub lunch, and home to plant the quince tree which the children gave Lucius.

We already have a quince tree in the garden, planted by my mother-in-law about 25 years ago. I don't know much about the lifespan of quince trees, but it's definitely looking its age, it no longer fruits reliably, and last month Lucius hacked away at in, calling it pruning, and I think that may have done for it. We'll leave it there, because it is beautiful, the lovely scented pale pink flowers in spring, the downy leaves, the golden apples. The new tree is nearby. We chose carefully, after much poring over books, and the variety is Vranja. Clever Eleanor for organising it (and getting all her siblings to agree to the plan). When it arrived, it turns out to have an award of garden merit from the Royal Horticultural Society, so I think we have chosen wisely.

Then Lucius and Alfred played snooker, Alfred beat Lucius at chess in pretty short order, and we went out to dinner with Dick and DD. This was, as always, terrific; DD is brilliant at the details which make an evening memorable. Dick opened a bottle of 1949 Medoc, an extraordinary treat. DD gave Lucius several of his favourites: roast lamb, two types of potatoes (soup first, then dauphinois), and, right at the end, after birthday cake, a supplementary birthday treat of violet creams - improbably Lucius's favourite, known in this house as violent creams. Wonderful.







I took the birthday cake - my mother-in-law's recipe, and which I have always used for birthday celebrations. Delicious (it always disappears in moments), and very easy to make (five minutes max, no need to turn on the oven). Indulgent,too - but of course that's the point of birthday celebrations.

250g digestive biscuits
125g butter
125g dark chocolate
65g sultanas
3 dessertspoons cocoa
3 dessertspoons golden syrup

Bash up the biscuits. It's better if they're not reduced to a fine tilth, the cake has a better texture if the biscuits are lumpy. But I've made it with crumbs from the food processor too. Use the end of a rolling pin.

In a large saucepan, melt all the other ingredients. The chocolate has a tendency to catch on the bottom, unless there's a film of butter underneath. When everything is melted, take it off the heat and stir in the biscuit crumbs. Then spread them out onto tinfoil. If I want it to look neat, I put the tinfoil onto a plate, and use that as a guide, but I don't always bother. Wrap in tinfoil (the easiest is to use a piece of foil twice the size of the cake, spread it in the middle, and then pull up the sides), and put in a cool place for an hour or two. Or make a day or two ahead.

Pizza dough

Pizza dough is one of those things that always cause me to get out dozens of recipe books, and, even then, I'm not satisfied. Last night, I made the best pizza dough ever, so I need to write it down. It came from the green River Cafe book, and, as so often with the River Cafe recipes, it didn't work as instructed, but, luckily, I was able to rescue it. This is a more sophisticated recipe than most, and has a little rye flour in it, to give it an edge.

Step 1: Mix four teaspoons of dried yeast (the sort that comes in a tin, not an instant sachet) with 125ml warm water (as a rough guide, two thirds from the cold tap, one third from the kettle, don't obsess). When the yeast has dissolved, add 150g rye flour. The instructions say to leave this for half an hour to form a sponge, but there's no chance of that with so little water, all you'll get is a hard ball. So I added more water, probably about the same amount again. Basically, you want the mixture to be loose. It will grow, so make sure you're doing this in a big bowl or mixing jug.

Step 2: When the mixture has frothed, which will take at least half an hour, and maybe more if there's a draft, or it's not very warm, you make the dough. In your mixer bowl, measure 500g plain flour (I used soft pasta flour for this, you really don't have to use hard bread flour), one tablespoon of salt (I use Maldon salt for everything), four tablespoons of olive oil, two tablespoons of milk, and 250g warm water (same rough guide as in step one). Then add your sponge, and mix with a dough hook. When it's kneaded, remove the hook and leave in a warm place to rise. It will need at least two hours. We went to the cinema at this point (Music and Lyrics, very funny), and came back three hours later.

Step 3: Knock back the dough, and leave to rise for another 40 minutes. (We did not do this, because we were hungry. The dough was good, two rises is counsel of perfection, and not always possible; bread dough is very accommodating).

Step 4: Divide the dough into four, roll into balls (flour the worktops an your hands), they will be about the size of cricket balls. Then roll these out using a rolling pin (although, actually, the pizza chef at Pizzeria Mama Mia in South Parade, Oxford, spins them on his fingers, then pinches out little bits to fill in any holes - fascinating watching him, if you sit at the small table by the kitchen window, Alfred, then aged about eight, and I were mesmerised).

Add your toppings, then put in a hot oven.

Lucius, Lettice and Alfred all swirled theirs with tomato sauce, then added a variety of delicacies - Parma ham, mushrooms, cheeses, etc. I had pizza bianca, with a scraping of onion which had been slowly stewed in olive oil, topped with a few pine nuts, some capers, and sultanas soaked in hot saffron water. Then I topped the lot with a pile of peppery winter salad leaves from the greenhouse (lots of rocket, a little mizuna, that sort of thing). Fantastic. And it was good fun, too.

Red cabbage

Red cabbage seems to be one of those things you either love or hate. My father always has to go out of the house if it's cooking, because he says he can't bear the smell of vinegar (although he likes pickled onions, salt and vinegar crisps - it's funny how particular and precise our palates are). Lucius says it's wasted on him, which is as close as he gets to saying yuck (kind man). Lettice and I both love it. But I often find that I don't get it quite right, particularly if I just do it from memory. This recipe, from Mary Berry's Aga cookbook, is the best, and I thought I would note it down as the cabbage cooks. I always do lots, because it freezes well, and is good when there's a crowd.

Shred one medium red cabbage. Peel, core and chop 6 or 7 eating apples. Put them into a big pan with six tablespoons of water, 40g sugar, and some salt. Stir. Bring to the boil (a matter of seconds), cover, and put in the bottom oven for one hour (ie cook very slowly, on a low flame). When it's cooked, add six tablespoons of vinegar (red wine vinegar is what I usually use), one tablespoon of redcurrant jelly, and a slug of olive oil (MB uses 50g of butter, but I don't, for obvious reasons).

You can eat this straight away, but I find it has a better flavour if you make it ahead and reheat it - I do this slowly in the bottom oven for half an hour or so, but you can do it over a low flame, in which case it needs to be stirred every so often. If you are going to freeze it, then make sure it's completely unfrozen before starting to reheat, otherwise it goes all mushy, and then it's not very good to eat.

Anchovy dressing for broccoli

Last week the recipe that came with my veg box was for a broccoli salad dressed in anchovy sauce. I liked the idea of it, but never got round to making it. In fact, I never actually read the instructions, just thought that an anchovy sauce would be good with broccoli. So last night, when I was cooking this week's veg box broccoli, I dug out the recipe. I don't know about you, but I don't like cold broccoli. So that was the end of that.

Instead, I dressed the hot broccoli in a sauce I whizzed up from six anchovies (I keep a jar of them in the fridge), one tablespoon of red wine vinegar, and two tablespoons of 0% fat fromage frais. Good strong flavour. One to remember. And a definite improvement on cold broccoli salad.

It also happened that we finished up some carrots from the weekend, sliced and cooked in freshly squeezed orange juice. On Sunday, I didn't reduce the juice, and they were okay. Last night I reduced the juice down to a sticky nothing, and they were fabulous. Also unexpectedly good beside the broccoli.

Dhal for lunch

Stefan the plumber who is here re-doing our bathrooms remarked last week that dhal was the best meal ever. So when I picked up the Waitrose freebie magazine Seasons and there was a recipe for spiced dhal, I decided to make some for my lunch. I didn't quite follow the recipe, and this is what I did:

Peel and chop one onion, sweat in some oil. Add a little curry powder, stir for a moment or two, then add a tin of tomatoes. When it's bubbling, add 120g red lentils and a canful of water. Bring back to the boil, then simmer for about 20 minutes until the lentils are tender.

I ate this with beautiful golden and scented saffron rice, which I cooked with a little of the onion and some pine nuts. (One cupful of rice, added to some chopped sweated onion and pine nuts, stirred about for a few moments, then cooked with the lid on tight in two cupsful of water until it's all gone and the rice is fluffy; then put aside to steam for a couple of minutes, or until everything else is ready. You add the saffron to a little hot water taken from one of the cups, soak it for a while before pouring it all into the pan.)

Quick, cheap, healthy heart food - Stefan was right!

Lentil salad with home-made cheese

At last, I've managed to take some photographs whilst preparing lunch! Johanna the passionate cook once took me to task (in a friendly way) for the lack of photos on my blog, and I've felt vaguely guilty about this ever since, even though my blog has always been mostly about helping me to remember what I've been cooking, and making it easy for friends to access specific recipes of things they've eaten here and liked.

I love lentils, all pulses really, but no-one else in the family shares this passion, so I have to choose lentil recipes with great care. Pulses are, of course, a particularly healthy heart food, the fibre helping to reduce cholesterol levels (that sounds SO like new age mumbo jumbo that I'm almost embarrassed to have written it - at the very least, the more beans you eat, the less room there is for meat, with its attendant dollops of saturated fat).

Lucius always looks vaguely disappointed whenever pulses are on the menu: not this time, though. And I know that cheese-making sounds like a time-consuming activity, but it's not, it's just one of those recipes you have to start early so that they can get on and do their thing all by themselves. This was a couple of minute's fiddling just after breakfast. Cooking the lentils was the most time-consuming (a minute or two for prep, then keeping an eye on them for the 20 minutes they took to cook). Out to the greenhouse for some salad leaves, and then a quick assembly job just before we ate. The result was lemon-scented salty lentils dressed in olive oil, their sharp savoury flavour set off by the soft sweetness of the barely-set curd cheese. One to make again and again.

First, the cheese. Put one litre of milk in a stainless steel saucepan and heat to blood temperature. In other words, put your finger in - if it feels hot, it's higher than blood temperature, if it feels cold, it's lower. The exact temperature is not critical, but it is important not to let it boil. Take it off the heat and put in two teaspoons of rennet. You may think rennet is impossible find, but it's not - I bought it (99p for a bottle which will last ages) in a medium-sized Waitrose, on the baking section. Leave this for fifteen minutes, at which point you will have what my grandmother called junket (and which we ate loads of during my childhood, those unimaginable days before yoghurt came in highly flavoured little pots). This is what Little Miss Muffet was eating - curds and whey.
To make the cheese, you need to drain off all the whey. You are supposed to do this by putting the curds into a muslin square which you then hang up. I had started before I realised there was no muslin in the house, and I didn't think a tea towel would do the trick. So I put some of the curds into my four little coeur a la creme pots, which have drain holes in the bottom, and the rest into a conical sieve. Drip drip drip until lunchtime. I'm afraid I let the whey go down the drain - the very particular flavour of Parma ham results from the pigs being fed on the whey made by makers of Parmesan cheese. But we don't have any pigs, and I didn't think the cats would like whey as much as the whole milk they normally drink.

Next, the lentils. 100g of Puy lentils will be enough for four people as a starter or side dish. Cook them in plenty of water with a sliced onion and some bay leaves. They'll be soft but not mushy within 20 minutes. Drain them, discard the bay, and dress them while they are still warm. I used the zest and juice of a lemon, lots of olive oil, with a little Maldon salt. When they were cool, I added half a tin of chopped anchovy fillets.

The rest was just an assembly job, using the strong flavours of the oriental mix salad leaves that are now growing strongly in the (unheated) greenhouse. It's a pity I didn't sow them in October rather than November, and then we would have had salad leaves all through the dark days of December and January.

My friend Susan, a very good cook, arrived for lunch towards the end of this process, and remarked that "real cooking" was in progress. True, but the sort that requires you to be a tiny bit organised (ie have decided what's for lunch three hours beforehand), rather than energetic. We ate it with home-made slow white bread, another recipe where time does all the work for you. Susan thought the blog should be decorated with me posing, chef-like, in front of my artfully arranged food. She took a couple of shots, but I'm not posting them because - as always - I look attrocious, laughing in one, talking in the other.

Here's a great idea ...

I've been thinking ... this sounds great .... it's Gennaro Contaldo's Italian porchetta - 5kg of belly pork should be enough to feed everyone at dinner, and you make your main preparations well ahead, give it a quick blast on the highest setting, then cook it slowly with fennel for hours and hours. I vaguely remember Jamie Oliver doing something like this in his Italy series, so I'll have to look that up. Or I could make it ahead - double quantities - and serve it cold for lunch, with herby boiled potatoes and one of Skye's beautiful salads. I think I feel a decision coming on, but I'll have to consult the butcher first ...


PS there's nothing new in the blogosphere ... I've just - belatedly - been doing an internet search for porchetta (somehow, for me, it feels more natural to go to the recipe books first, but I think I may be going to get out of this 20th century habit fairly soon!) .. and found this wonderful post, covering both Contaldo and Oliver. Thanks, Keiko!

Birthday planning - and an orange cake

Here, never mind Valentine's Day, we are planning for Lucius's 60th birthday, which falls on February 15th. Thank heavens he wasn't born a few hours earlier, or he would have been called Valentine, so his mother used to tell me. So this year's not the year for little heart-shaped amuse bouches, or relentlessly pink puddings (not that I've ever gone in for that sort of cooking, in truth).

On the great day itself, I am organising a magical mystery tour (he wanted it to start at 2pm, after he'd had a meeting, but I told him to rearrange it - it's not every day you have your sixtieth birthday during half term, so that the children can join in too). Then on Saturday 17th, some of his closest friends are coming to dinner - we'll be 10 or 12 round the table. The following day, his family are coming for lunch, and then we'll be 35-40, everyone helping themselves. That's a lot of cooking in a short space of time (& I forgot to mention breakfast on Sunday morning for the friends staying the night), so it has to be carefully planned.

Careful planning means, of course, getting out the recipe books. You can't really follow a recipe for a large party, because, in general, they are for 4-6 people, and not conducive to multiplication. So when there's a crowd, it's easy to get stuck in the cold-ham-baked-potatoes-and-a-salad rut (or in summer cold salmon, boiled potatoes and a salad - you get the idea). On the other hand, it's got to be easy enough to serve without fuss, and so that I am at the party, rather than stuck in kitchen maid mode: red-faced, cross, & missing all the fun.

So, for inspiration, I've been reading Skye Gyngell's lovely book A Year in my Kitchen, as well as Diva Cooking by Victoria Blashford-Snell and Jennifer Joyce. And then, to keep my feet firmly on the ground, Cook Now, Eat Later by Mary Berry, whose work is a little like Delia's. Nigel Slater's no good for this sort of thing, because he only ever seems to cook for two or three, and for him a crowd is six, whereas, with four children, that's my starting point; Nigella doesn't like crowds, either, although I think that's because all her crowd-pleasing recipes seem to involve so much last-minute work.

Here, we want special, celebratory food. I've got plenty of time to prepare ahead, and don't want too much last-minute fuss to spoil the party for me. I also don't want to veer too far from our usual path of avoiding saturated fat, eating plenty of seasonal fruit and veg. However, it is a party, a special party, and rules are made to be broken. And there's another thing: potatoes are Lucius's favourite food, in fact, he doesn't really consider it a meal unless there are hot potatoes.

At the moment, I'm thinking Skye's cauliflower and Gorgonzola soup with pickled pear relish - the relish can be made several days in advance, and will probably be all the better for it; the soup can be made a day or two ahead, and will be easy to reheat and serve. Also, I'm still getting terrific pears and cauliflowers in my veg box. A little cheese in the soup will be a real treat for us. This agra dolce combination, so typical of Skye's food, will be wonderful with home-made white bread, the NY Times recipe that so many bloggers have just discovered.

Skye also has lots of tempting salads, particularly one made with sprouting broccoli, radicchio and frisee dressed with chilli and garlic oil. That sounds as if it would be good with lamb, but I haven't yet decided - I need to talk to the butcher.

Pudding - Skye has a lovely blood orange jelly, which I thought I'd make for dinner, and serve with sliced blood oranges. I love them, always have, that little bit of Sicilian sunshine which brightens up the dark months of northern Europe. There are plenty of them in the market at the moment, although I have noticed that Waitrose has started to call them blush oranges. What's wrong with traditional names, particularly when they are more descriptive than the new, mealy-mouthed marketing department's apology for a name?

So dinner's getting sorted - I just have to decide on a main course, and something to hand round with drinks.

Buffet lunch - the only thing I have so far decided is that for pudding we'll have meringues and some sort of fruit compote, together with an orange cake, the lovely Claudia Roden cake from her Book of Jewish Food, which is one of my all-time favourite winter puddings. It looks like the summer sun, vibrant with colour, it tastes of the southern Mediterranean - sweet with almonds, bitter with orange. It is a recipe redolent with history, a Sephardic recipe which has been made for centuries to celebrate the winter months. Our chickens have come into full lay, so it's a useful way to use their eggs to good effect - cakes are definitely better made with the best eggs, and our Buff Orpington chickens scratch around the garden most days, finding whatever they like to eat (and last weekend that was the young shoots of the kale I've been anticipating for the kitchen!).

So ... lots more decisions, any suggestions welcomed.

Claudia Roden's orange cake

2 oranges
6 eggs
250g sugar
2 tbsp orange blossom water
1 tsp baking powder
250g ground almonds

Boil the oranges in water until they are soft. This will take about an hour, perhaps a little more. Carefully drain them in a colander, and, when they are cool, split them open with your hands and take out the pips. Put them into the Magimix with all the other ingredients, and whizz until everything is smooth (the oranges will disintegrate in moments, which makes me think you could probably mix this by hand without any real difficulty, although I have never tried this).

It would be better if you beat the eggs and sugar together first, but I never do. It would be better if you ground your own lightly toasted almonds, but I seldom do. It does not much matter if you leave out the orange blossom water, which I sometimes do. Last time I made it I forgot to put in the baking powder, and the result was a little less light than usual, but it did not spoil the cake. This is a very forgiving recipe (and you can make it with any sort of orange citrus - clementines are good).

Pour into a 26cm tin which you have greased (I always use olive oil for this). CR says you should dust it with flour or Matzo meal; I never have, because I use a clip tin with a removable base. Bake for one hour at 190C, and leave to cool in the tin before turning out.

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

Retro fish mousse

There's something rather 70s about using gelatine, and it's probably 30 years since I last did. This was a way to use up the end of the Christmas smoked salmon, although I think it would work with any kind of fish, fresh or smoked. (Actually, I don't yet know if it's "worked" because I haven't turned out the mould, but it looks and tastes good.) We've got some neighbours coming for supper in the kitchen tomorrow, and this seemed an elegant but not over-the-top way to begin.

Blitz 700g smoked salmon trimmings with a 500g tub of 0% fromage frais, and the juice & finely grated rind of a lemon. Meanwhile, soak in water two small sheets of gelatine (I used Costa fine leaf, bought in Waitrose), and heat 250ml fish stock. Take the stock off the heat, squeeze the gelatine and drop it into the stock. Stir to dissolve, then leave to cool. When it's cold but not set, mix it into the fish. This is enough for about eight people, so I put some into four little ramekins, the rest into a terrine mould lined with cling film. I'll freeze this and use it next week when we've got a few more people coming round.

I bought the fish stock, even though I normally try not to use industrially processed food. It was Waitrose Cooks' Ingredients, the sort that comes in a plastic bag. I read the ingredients list carefully, and decided to buy it because it had no salt, and contained only things that I use in my kitchen - white fish, lobster, langoustine, carrot, onion, white wine, tomato puree, celery, lemon juice, tarragon, bay leaf, white pepper. It doesn't say how much water there is - my guess is lots, because you would have been hard pressed to taste many if any of those flavours. Next time I'm at the fishmonger, I think I'll get some trimmings and make my own, so that I can freeze it in very small amounts.

Beetroot salad

We've been eating seasonally for over a year now - easy in the summer, but it needs careful thought at this time of year. As we've got better at it, we've added more rules: positively no vegetables with jet lag, preferably raised in the UK, although trucked in from Spain at a pinch. We're not sure what to think about British veg raised under heated glass (this week's lettuce, after weeks without), or frozen veg (all that electricity), or cans, or commercially bottled produce. We're not yet ready to say that everything should be raised in the garden, but I am certainly planning a more elaborate veg patch this year. I am already more concerned with late summer and autumn plantings than spring sowings, because if you get the early sowings wrong, there's plenty of choice in the market. If you plant late in the autumn, then the winter salads aren't growing well enough to sustain the kitchen through the dark months - and that's what happened to us this year. My lovely saladisi, a mix of cut-and-come-again leaves, have not been strong enough to stand repeated pickings, and they would have been if I had sown them three weeks earlier. The kale, too, which stands outside the kitchen window, should have been in the ground a month earlier to make strong growth before the light faded - we won't be able to start eating them until late February. It's been a steep learning curve, and we're all fed up with squash and turnips.

So last night, I tried something different - a salad made from one of those vacuum packs of beetroot. The dressing was unusual, and suggested by a half-remembered recipe written by Angelika, who writes a blog called The Flying Apple from Vienna. Vacuum-packed beetroot are normally fairly bland, but this easy salad is bursting with flavour.

I LOVE beetroot - we used to have it every Wednesday at school, pickled in harsh malt vinegar, with a slice of corned beef and a dollop of lumpy mash. For years it was my favourite comfort food, although corned beef is now firmly off our menu (it doesn't actually say on the tin how much saturated fat there is, but when you look at it you see that it must be getting on for 50%). I know that beetroot is, for many, a horror food: at school the nuns used to keep us in until we had finished everything our plates - I never went to school on a Friday afternoon, because I couldn't, just couldn't, eat the slice of Edam. Elsie McArthur never went to school at all in the afternoons, because there were all sorts of things she couldn't eat. My friend DD was a picky eater, but managed to gain her freedom most afternoons by hiding the remains in her napkin or pocket. For obvious reasons she couldn't do this on beetroot day.

All this staring at plates took place in a huge Victorian glasshouse, with a beautiful tiled floor, which was set in the old walled garden of Friar Park, an extraordinary mansion on the edge of Henley on Thames which later became the home of the Beatle George Harrison. My memories of the house are vivid but patchy - try as I may, some parts of it I just can't visualise, although others are as clear in my mind as parts of this house in which I have been living for 20 years. We must have been hanging our heads over the revolting remains, because what I remember best of all about the glasshouse is the lovely floor.

But back to the beetroot:
Slice the roots in a 250g vacuum pack. Make a dressing with a little zest from an orange, a little of the juice, a teaspoon of chilli jam (or use Thai chilli sauce if you don't make this useful and delicious fresh-tasting cross between sauce and jam), and a few drops of chilli oil. Leave to infuse for 10 minutes or so, and strew it with a pinch of Maldon salt before serving.

Aromatic prawns

Horatio and I have just eaten the most delicious Sunday evening supper - I hesitate to call it curry, because that makes you think of chilli peppers, hot hot food, and the need for dahl, iced cold water, and yoghurt. We often eat something light and fishy on a Sunday evening, which generally translates into sardines on toast, with a little yoghurt, lemon juice, and some chopped spring onions (and that's what Lucius will probably make for himself when he gets back from playing real tennis at Merton). But Horatio is the only other person in the house who seeks out curry, and as we were the only two at home this evening, it was an opportunity too good to miss.

This is a kind of korma, but without the coconut, which we don't eat, because it is full of saturated fat (I still find it difficult to understand how a plant can make saturated fat). Instead, there are ground almonds to sweeten the sauce, which has an aromatic depth of flavour from six spices.

First, chop a large onion, and sweat it gently in oil with a couple of sliced cloves of garlic. This should take 20-30 minutes, and you'll need to add a little water from time to time to stop it catching. You want soft onion, not too brown. Put the rice on to cook (one mug of basmati, two of water, cook covered until all the water is absorbed, just under 20 minutes).

While this is going on, organise your spices. In a mortar, put the seeds from two cardamom pods, half a teaspoon of fennel seeds, two cloves, half a teaspoon of cinnamon and of ginger, and some freshly grated nutmeg. Bash it with a pestle until you have a sticky rich mess.

When you are nearly ready to eat (ie, when the rice is all but cooked), add the spices to the onions, give it a good stir, and add 250g prawns. Stir, then add 2 tablespoons of ground almonds, two tablespoons of yoghurt and a glass of water (120-150ml). Simmer for five to ten minutes, until the sauce has thickened to your liking.

Even the most adamant chilli hater couldn't object to this curry. I'll make it later this week with chicken or pork - either would be good.

Onion soup

What is it about soup and the New Year? Something light and cheap after the holidays, I suppose. This was lunch the other day - onions, a little bread, some left over cheese, slowly transformed into something greater than the sum of its parts, the sweetness of the onions complementing the savoury crouton.

Peel one large onion per person, cut it in half and then slice as finely as possible. Fry on the lowest heat in the least possible amount of olive oil, stirring every so often, for half an hour or more, until the onions are melting and beginning to brown. Then add liquid. This can be water or stock. Either will do. If it is water, then a little flavouring wouldn't come amiss - say, a little wine, perhaps there's some brandy left over from the Christmas cake, a little balsamic vinegar, any of those three bubbled up before adding water sparingly. Or stock, but only if you've made it. (I find this takes very little effort: say, two minutes twice, spread over several hours - washing up the pan takes more.) Simmer the soup gently for 20-30 minutes, until the onion is meltingly tender and all the flavours are amalgamated.

When it's ready, toast some bread, add cheese, grill. We used cheddar for the children, stilton for the adults.

Serve in shallow soup plates, and float the rarebit on top.

Variations would include adding thyme, or cinnamon, or nutmeg. But what makes this so delicious is its simplicity (it's hardly a recipe, more a reminder), so probably best not to try too many variations.