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Blackcurrants

25/6/2020

A key component of a safe life this summer is not just a supply of face masks and thin rubber gloves. (Has anyone thought about the implications for sea life and the rest of the environment when we come to dispose of these?) It is a megaphone.

Those of us fortunate enough to have outside space will be sitting in it the requisite 2 meters apart. I don’t know about you, but my ears have found it a baffling experience adjusting to unfamiliar sounds or the lack of any sound at all. First, the disappearance of traffic and overhead plane noise (particularly those wretched fighter planes that rip through the sound barrier without warning). The empty echo in the eardrums has felt not unlike tinnitus. And now the silence has been replaced by such a joyful cacophony of liberated birds, I can’t hear a thing unless whoever I’m talking to is illegally well inside the authorised isolation zone of self-protection. So I’m investing in two megaphones - one for me, one spare for guests who haven’t brought their own.

If you’re querying why I’m having guests on the premises at all, I assure you I am following all the requisite guidelines about not allowing them to come through the house and dusting it with the contaminating impurities of their exterior social connections. They go round the edge. If I had a balcony accessible only through an interior room, I would also have invested in a ladder, so my guests could perform a Cyranno or Romeo from the street.

These stalwart friends will be greeted, as is the season, with a kir. Lost for distractions, I have been making Crème de Cassis by the gallon in anticipation of a bit of garden social life. Blackcurrants are about to become available fresh in the markets. But you can generally find them frozen in most supermarket freezers all year round. They are a fine investment, not just for making Crème de Cassis, but for making blackcurrant sorbet which, along with lemon, is probably the most effectively refreshing sorbet flavour.

Kir was invented by Canon Felix Kir, a hero of the French resistance who died in 1968 aged 92. His goal was to improve the livelihoods of the blackcurrant growers of Dijon, where he lived.

Just in case you’re new to the uplifting experience, Crème de Cassis topped up with chilled white wine makes a ‘Kir’. Topped with Champagne or Crémant, it’s a ‘Kir Royale’. A spoonful of Crème de Cassis poured over blackcurrant sorbet or vanilla ice cream lifts both to a higher plane the Canon would surely approve of.

500g blackcurrants
570ml eau-de-vie, vodka, gin or brandy
340g sugar

Defrost if necessary and mash blackcurrants with a fork, or squeeze hard with clean hands. Mix ingredients together in a large bowl then ladle into bottling jars and leave in a warm sunny place for at least a month, the longer the better, so make it in twice the quantity for the months to come. Strain through doubled muslin cloth, squeezing out the juice, and re-bottle. While you can buy an eau-de-vie at the pharmacy, cheap vodka makes a perfectly good stand in.

To make blackcurrant sorbet, you need

500g blackcurrants
Dessertspoon lemon juice
285g sugar
425-565ml water
2 egg whites
4 tablespoons creme de cassis (optional)

Puree the blackcurrants with the lemon juice in a blender or processor the sieve to remove the seeds. Make a syrup with the water and sugar. Cool then add enough to the puree to make a puree the consistency of an apple puree that isn’t too solid. Pour into a container and freeze. Every now and then, stir the frozen edges into the centre of the puree until the puree is firm all through but not a hard block.

Whisk the egg whites in a large mixing bowl until stiff, using an electric beater. With the beater running on a modest speed, add a large spoonful of the frozen puree and whisk in. Very gradually, spoonful by spoonful, whisk in the remaining puree and finally the Crème de Cassis, then scrape into a container and freeze till required. You can serve this with small sweet biscuits, like Langues de Chat or biscotti, and more Crème de Cassis poured over.

If you want to make a lemon sorbet, use 285ml lemon juice to 285g sugar and 565ml water and proceed as with the blackcurrant sorbet.

This column written by Julia Watson originally appeared in the June 2020 edition of The Bugle.

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Jugged hare/Civet de lievre

8/6/2020

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March is the month of mad hares when Lepus europaeus, the European hare, dazzled by the excitement of the breeding season at its peak, behaves in a bizarre and unpredictable fashion. Sneak quietly into an early morning or early evening field and stand stock still and you might catch them leaping vertically in a triumphal jump, or boxing at other hares. Not unlike some of our own mates’ behaviour, really.

The English may have ceded the hare as a cooking ingredient to the French, focusing Anglo Saxon attention on the more commonly available rabbit. But they are just as fond of the hare and use the same approach to the cooking of them. Civet de lievre, menu mainstay of Paris’s most popular brasseries and named for the ‘civettes’ - chives - that were originally part of its preparation, is no more than the jugged hare from over the Channel. The recipes and methods are almost mirror images the one of the other.

Hannah Glasse, venerable author of The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, the seminal English cookbook published in 1747, is credited with opening her recipe for jugged hare with the memorable instruction, “First catch your hare.” This, though, is thought to be inaccurate. What she is actually believed to have written is, “First case your hare,” ‘to case’ meaning to slit the skin of the creature and separate it from it in one piece, much like rolling your sock down your leg.

Her cookbook went into 20 editions during the remainder of the 18th century alone (and included what is thought to be the first English recipe for a curry). Glasse was a plagiarist, as later cookery writers became of her work, and pinched her recipes from all manner of sources. This might explain why her jugged hare recipe runs so closely to civet de lievre.

Jugging a hare is an English method, not a French one, ‘to jug’ meaning to set jointed and marinated pieces of meat in a jug into a bath of boiling water and leaving it to cook slowly for three hours.

French records show the hare being hunted for food back in the Middle Ages when it was cooked with spices, verjus, onions and wine, burnt toast being incorporated at the end of the cooking to induce the rich black colour of the gravy. These days, the toast has been lost along with the most of the spices, and the gravy of the civet often made with white wine and stock so that its gravy is clear not opaque.

Only at the beginning of the 20th century was blood added to the gravy - if it was added at all.

Spoiler alert (in the sense of the detail possibly spoiling your appetite): To prepare a hare for jugging or for a civet, its entrails having been removed, it is hung in a cool place by its legs until its blood has gathered in its chest cavity. This blood is drawn off and mixed with red wine or red wine vinegar to prevent it from coagulating, then added last thing to the cooked dish before serving. Jugging, like any slow cooking, is a good cooking method when a hare might have passed the pinnacle of its youth.

Jugged hare/Civet de lievre
Serves 8
For the marinade

2.5/3kg hare, jointed
1 bottle of robust red wine
1 large onion, peeled and chopped
1 carrot peeled and chopped
3 sprigs thyme
6 juniper berries, lightly crushed
1 bay leaf
4 large fresh sage leaves
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed

For the casserole

olive oil for sauteeing the onion
1 large onion, peeled and sliced
150g lardons
25g butter
2 tablespoons plain flour
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
3 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed
1 bouquet garni
300 ml hare blood (optional) or stock

Put the hare into a china or glass bowl. Add all the marinade ingredients. Cover with cling film and refrigerate for 24-48 hours.
Drain the hare in a colander over a bowl, discard the vegetables and pat the hare dry with kitchen towel. Season the hare.

Add oil to a heavy bottomed saute pan and brown the onions, lardons and pieces of hare. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside.
Wipe the pan clean of oil and add the butter to melt over low heat. Add the flour and stir till it turns gold.

Pour in the marinade wine and bring to the boil. Return the hare and onions to the pan and add the bouquet garni, reserving the lardons Season to taste, cover and simmer over low heat for 2.5 hours. 10 minutes before the end of cooking, add the lardons.

If you are using the hare blood, pour it into a warmed bowl. Add several tablespoons of the hot sauce from the saute pan, beating all the while, then whisk the contents of the bowl back into the saute pan and simmer until thickened a little. If adding stock, before returning the hare to the pan, bring the liquid to the boil and boil fast to reduce and thicken it a little.

Serve with potato puree or buttered tagliatelle.

This column written by Julia Watson originally appeared in the March 2020 edition of The Bugle.

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Store cupboard supplies + drying tomatoes and mushrooms

8/6/2020

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If we listen to the scientists and the medical profession, we are in for a much longer Covid 19 haul than the politicians would prefer us to believe. Three to four months ahead of us now, followed by a brief autumn break before a further period of quarantine, is the science community’s prediction.

I don’t want to be the harbinger of that depressing news. But if this is the case - and even if it isn’t, we should brace ourselves in a practical fashion. We hear about the UK hoarding loo paper and pasta, an intriguing combination. My email inbox is crammed with videos of strangers’ children doing unbelievably dangerous things indoors without apparent parental intervention because Maman or Papa is busy holding the camera, and video entreaties to join online ballet lessons (what?) or send a thoughtful poem to a chain of 20 people, and invitations to virtual cocktail and dinner parties. (Sorry, not dressed for it.) I don’t plan to come out of this proficient in a pirouette or having memorised the Bhagavad Gita. But I do think it could alter my approach to stocking the kitchen.

Four years in Moscow during the Soviet period of deprivation taught me never to throw out any leftovers but to convert them into another meal. When a glut of fruit or vegetables appeared in a battered cardboard box tied in twine and hauled by some smallholder from the countryside to sell on a city pavement, we bought as much as we could fit in our shopping bags and worked out only later how to preserve the treasure for the barren months.

It’s back to a blitz existence.

It doesn’t have to be. We are assured by supermarkets there is plenty of food. We do not need to hoard more than we can use immediately ourselves. The problem is logistics - how to sort and stack it on shelves when self-isolation is affecting staffing numbers. Working in a food bank, I notice the food we are being sent by supermarkets, growers, and restaurant suppliers is all fresh, not dried or tinned. Crates of excellent vegetables, fruits, cuts of meat, fillets of fish, are all being delivered because their Best Before dates - the confusing indicator that doesn’t mean the food has become dangerous to eat but only that it's no longer at its peak condition - were about to expire. But we aren’t being sent any tinned or boxed or bottled provisions. There aren’t any of those going spare. Even before it needs to, the general public is filling every household nook and cranny with non-perishable products against the future.

In this critical time, if we don’t support now the people who work to provide us with fresh produce by buying it in the measured manner we do in normal times, they won’t survive this crisis to supply us with fresh vegetables, fruits, meat and dairy goods once it’s over.

However, I suspect you won’t take the slightest bit of notice of this entreaty. So here is a shopping list for an emergency store cupboard of ingredients that if you don't stray from it, will help create delicious meals, will prevent the shelves from being unnecessarily stripped of everything, and will leave grocery supplies for others to buy. Then you can hunker down in self-isolation, emerging only to buy fresh food from those dedicated people producing it:
One tube each of tomato paste, anchovy paste, and garlic paste; tomato passata and tinned tomatoes; basic spices like black peppercorns, fennel and coriander seeds, and cinnamon sticks; curry powder, turmeric and coconut cream if you like a curry; instant coffee (for drinking in extremis - but can you make tiramisu without it?); cocoa powder; Pruneaux d’Agen and dried apricots; oatflakes; flour (learn to make your own pasta - it’s easy and passes the time); mustard; oil and vinegar; salt, sugar, honey; capers; tinned tuna; dried pulses and legumes, from chickpeas and lentils to butter beans and flageolets; rice and couscous; Knorr’s jellied bouillon pots.

Meanwhile, you can make a personal contribution to your store cupboard by drying your own tomatoes and mushrooms. Both cheer up a soup or stew with their intensity of flavour. Drying often tasteless supermarket tomatoes makes more of them, and of the summer glut about to arrive.

Take the oven racks out of your oven and preheat it to 50C or the lowest setting possible. Remove the stems of the tomatoes and slice them in half lengthways. Lay the halves side by side, cut side up, on cake racks, making sure they don't touch each other. Set the cake racks on top of the oven racks. Sprinkle very lightly with salt. Bake until the tomatoes are shrivelled and feel dry but flexible. You don't want them brittle. This will take from 6 to 12 hours, so keep checking. Once dried, take them out of the oven and let them cool completely on the cake racks, then store them in clean glass jars or in ziplock plastic bags. They should last indefinitely.

The same principle works for mushrooms, especially cepes. But check them regularly as they contain less water for their size than tomatoes.

This column written by Julia Watson originally appeared in the May 2020 edition of The Bugle.

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Eggs

11/5/2020

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When she worked as a copywriter, British novelist Fay Weldon created the slogan, “Go to work on an egg”. It was a brilliant punning directive that my mother took as a command. Every morning for breakfast before school, my sister and I were presented with a hard boiled one. As soon as I left home, I vowed never to eat another boiled egg again.

But this April is a special month for eggs. Easter is observed and the shops are stacked with chocolate versions. Hens are happily, as opposed to unhappily, back outside, producing what’s expected of them. Everywhere, eggs are being celebrated.

I may have rejected eggs that had been boiled but what my mother concocted with eggs in other cooking directions that the whole family and guests did relish was make wonderful fluffy souffles.

There’s more myth and fear surrounding the making of souffles than any other recipe. How to make them rise? Why didn’t they rise? Was the eggwhite over-beaten? Was the mixing bowl greasy? Was the whisk greasy? What mistake was made? So much unnecessary wringing of hands...

Forget all that. They are a doddle to cook and an excellent choice for a light lunch, a starter, an impressive dessert or a quickly assembled meal for unexpected visitors. All that’s necessary is to stop being impressed by them and remember they are merely a bechamel sauce with added flavour and puff.

If there’s a trick at all, it’s that you should always add one more egg white than you have egg yolks. Two, if you’re feeling trepidation or the eggs are small. Equally, for a cheese souffle you should add a good deal more grated cheese - preferably from the strongest and cheapest Cheddar or Cantal - than most recipes call for. When she made a souffle for four, my mother used at least 250g grams of whatever in the fridge was going stale (and sometimes needed some blue scraping off). Recipes other than hers can cite as little as 100 grams for the same number of servings.

A souffle doesn’t have to be cheese or chocolate. For a savoury one, you can fold in shards of smoked salmon or crab, or a duxelle of mushrooms, a pea puree or anything you like. On the sweet side, the same cooking method produces a chocolate souffle, a pistachio souffle, a Grand Marnier souffle, an apricot souffle and on and on...Once you have the knack, you can progress to Twice-Baked Souffles, a boon for the show-off dinner party cook since they’re made partly ahead.

Here’s my mother’s cheese souffle recipe: Make a fairly thick bechamel sauce from around 200ml of warmed milk. While hot, take off heat and add 300g grated strong cheese. Stir till melted, season with grinds of black pepper, a little grated nutmeg or some cayenne pepper, then, one at a time, drop in four egg yolks whose whites you have separated off into a large clean bowl. Add one or two extra egg whites to the mixing bowl contents and whisk to firm peaks. Dump a quarter of the froth into the cheesy bechamel and briskly incorporate to loosen the sauce. Then carefully fold in the remainder, making sure no egg white remains to be seen. Pour into a greased souffle dish and bake for 20-30 minutes in an oven pre-heated to 200C which you turn down at once to 180C. The length of time depends on how runny you like your souffle.

If that lack of precision is a bit daunting, try this:

Serves 4

50g butter
50g plain flour
200-300ml milk, heated
300g leftover hard cheese, grated
4 large eggs, separated plus one extra egg white
grating of nutmeg
pinch cayenne pepper
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Preheat oven to 200C.

Melt the butter in a saucepan. Grease a 20cm soufflé dish with some of it, then, if you wish - my mother never did - dust with grated Parmesan. In the saucepan, stir the flour into the melted butter, stir till it turns a light gold and sandy. Very gradually, a little at a time, pour in the heated milk to make a bechamel sauce and stir till thick over low heat, cooking out the flour taste for around 3-5 minutes. (The difference in the quantity of milk cited relates to different types/freshness of flour and types of butter whose water content can affect the sauce. What you want to finish with is a thick one sauce. Start with 200ml milk, adding the extra 100ml if the sauce is too stiff to introduce the cheese into it.) Stir in the cheese to melt. Draw off the heat, then one by one beat in the egg yolks. Season to taste, then add the nutmeg and cayenne pepper.

In a clean bowl, whisk the egg whites until stiff. Beat a quarter into the cheese sauce, then carefully fold in the rest, making sure there’s no white showing, then pour into the soufflé dish and place in the centre of the oven. Turn the heat down to 180C. Bake the soufflé for 25-30 mins until puffed up and golden, 20 minutes if you like the base a little runny.

Serve with a salad and some crusty bread on the side.

For more than 4 servings, to the same amount of sauce and cheese base, the ratio is one egg per person plus one extra white for the whole number. If you want to serve 6 to 8 (limited by the size of the souffle dish!), add 2 extra egg whites not 1.

This column written by Julia Watson originally appeared in the April 2020 edition of The Bugle.

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Nuts

3/2/2020

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You might be confident that the only feast day of any concern during February is St Valentine’s Day, with its promise of chocolate, roses and, possibly, romance. But if you lived in the US, the 14th of February is only the start of it.

2nd February heralds the Big Game day, as in the Super Bowl, the championship game of the National Football League, that game where some music megastar performs during half time and loses track of their underwear or singing reputation. Almost incidentally, two football teams duke it out for the title of league champions. That’s followed two days later by Homemade Soup Day, which I’m guessing the Food & Drug Administration made up, or Heinz or Campbell sponsored. 10th February is Oatmeal Monday, the purpose of which may be to stoke you up with enough porridge to permit you to cope with the demands of Valentine’s Day. But I may be wrong.

Once Valentine’s Day is over and done with, there is Almond Day on the 16th, followed by the rival Pistachio Day on the 26th, then the double whammy finale on the 27th to wind up February of Chili Day - and Strawberry Day, in case you ever questioned whether Americans eat seasonally.

Of course, if you go into In Depth research, you’ll also discover that, along with other US national days in February allocated to Nutella, Chopsticks, Frozen Yogurt, Fettuccine Alfredo, Molasses Bars, Bagels and Lox, Pizza, and Chocolate Fondue, the whole of February itself is Berry Fresh Month, Celebration Of Chocolate Month, Great American Pies Month, National Canned Food Month, National Cherry Month, National Fiber Focus Month, National Fondue Month, National Grapefruit Month, National Heart Healthy Month, National Hot Breakfast Month, National Snack Food Month, and National Potato Lovers Month.

And you still think how and what we eat is under the control of us consumers?

It’s enough to drive you nuts. So let this February column provide a focus on those. Almonds (whose day, remember, is the 16th) and Pistachios (the 26th) are the treats allotted to people on diets in need of something tempting that raises energy while not entirely ruining sensible eating behaviour. But only in small quantity. Nuts are high in calories - around 400 in 85 grams, which amounts to two handfuls of nuts absolute tops.

Strictly speaking, a nut is a fruit. The word ‘nut’ implies that the fruit lies inside a shell which doesn’t open unless forced.

Almonds are full of healthy fats, fibre and protein, magnesium and vitamin E. They can lower blood sugar levels, cholesterol and blood pressure. A few of them can also reduce hunger pangs, which is why they’re proposed by dieticians to encourage those on diets. Pistachios have similar properties while also containing antioxidants, vitamin B6, and thiamine, and can promote gut, eye and blood vessel health.

Here’s a recipe for a moist cake in which you can use either almonds or pistachios, although pistachios will give it a more pronounced flavour. But where it reads ‘pistachios’, use almonds if you prefer. Stick a rose on the cake to celebrate Valentine’s Day with a slice, or bake it any day of February to mark the whole month.

Pistachio or Almond Cake

100g pistachios, chopped
200g golden caster sugar
150g butter, softened, plus extra for the tin
125g soured cream
3 eggs
200g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp vanilla extract
4 limes, zested and juiced
200g icing sugar
2 tbsp pistachios, thinly sliced

Heat the oven to 180C/ fan 160C/gas 4 and butter and line a 20cm x 10cm x 7cm 900g loaf tin with a long strip of baking paper.

Put the pistachios and sugar in a food processor and whizz until fine. Add the butter, soured cream, eggs, flour, baking powder, bicarb, vanilla extract and lime zest, and whizz until smooth. Scrape into the prepared tin and bake for 50-55 minutes or until a skewer poked into the centre comes out clean (if it browns too quickly, cover with a sheet of foil). Cool for 20 minutes in the tin, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

To make the icing, mix enough lime juice into the icing sugar to make a drizzle-able icing. Spoon over the cake then finish with the pistachio slivers.

This column written by Julia Watson originally appeared in the February 2020 edition of The Bugle.

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Jerusalem artichokes

2/1/2020

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In the years when we lived in the capital of the then Soviet Union, Moscow’s farmers markets were divided into different sections. One, reeking of brine, was a barricade of wooden barrels in which sliced cabbages, heads of garlic, or small cucumbers pickled and fermented away in sour water flavoured with dill and peppercorns. In the vegetables section, burly women wrapped in shawls against the winter chill of the building stood behind mountains of more cabbage heads, piles of onions, their green shoots emerging from flabby bodies, and snow-rotting potatoes scarred by spades. Butchers in the meat section sold lumps that had been attacked without much control by the Soviet equivalent of the ruthless slasher of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie.

One January, hidden in the plants, flowers and bulbs section, I came across the gnarled roots of Jerusalem artichokes. Why are you selling them in this part of the market? I asked. The Russian babushka favoured me with a look that said, Another crazy Westerner who knows nothing: Because this is the plants area. But, I protested, they’re vegetables!

It’s rare to provoke laughter in a Soviet farmers market. She brought her associates in to share the joke. Apparently, Jerusalem artichokes, sold under the fudged-French name and pronunciation as Tuppinumboor, were grown for privacy.

True, they can soar to astonishing heights, far outgrowing in proportion their tiny floral versions of the sunflower to which they are related. Despite their name, Jerusalem artichokes are not artichokes. ‘Jerusalem’ is a corruption of the Italian word ‘girosole’ - ‘follow the sun’, and, like regular large-blossomed sunflowers grown for their oil and seeds, turn their heads with the sun crossing the sky.

They are easier to grow than to prepare for cooking, though it is less of an effort to prize the thick skin from the white flesh beneath than it used to be. They have been developed to be less covered in knobs so you no longer need to boil them before peeling them which made their white flesh unpleasantly grey after cooking. Stewed with some onion melted in butter and thinned out with milk, or water, or a light stock, Jerusalem artichokes make one of the most comforting of winter soups, served sprinkled with crisp crumbs of bacon. They can also be dropped peeled, around a joint and roasted. But this version with cod shows them off as a real star vegetable.

Jerusalem Artichokes with Sautéed Cod
Serves 6

2kg Jerusalem artichokes
Juice of one lemon
55g shallots (1 large), peeled
200g carrots (2 or 3), peeled
200g bacon
60ml olive oil or duck fat
8 cloves of garlic (not peeled)
24 pearl onions, peeled
5 sprigs fresh thyme
2 bay leaves
1/2 litre Chablis or other dry white wine
1/2 litre chicken stock
30 mussels, cleaned and de-bearded (optional)
6 x 170g cod (preferably loin, about 4 pieces)
Olive oil or duck fat
Salt and freshly milled black pepper to taste

Peel Jerusalem artichokes and drop them in a bowl of water acidulated with the juice of one lemon to keep their colour. Dice bacon, shallots and carrots into small cubes. Cut artichokes into 2.5cm cubes. Brown bacon in a pan with 2 tablespoons of olive oil or duck fat over medium-high heat. Once bacon begins to colour, add garlic, pearl onions and carrots, and saute 2 more minutes. Add shallots, thyme and bay leaves. Cook 2 minutes, stirring. Add white wine and reduce until pan is almost dry.

In a separate pan, add remainder of olive oil or duck fat. When the pan is very hot, add artichokes and sauté, shaking regularly to brown all over, then add them to the first pan and pour in chicken stock. Bring to a boil and cover pan with a lid. Cook for 10 minutes at high heat.

After artichokes have softened, sieve liquid content of pan into a clean pan, reserving artichokes, and reduce liquid by half with a fast boil. Season to taste, then add mussels. Cover pan and cook on a high flame about 1 minute. Discard any mussels that remain closed. Incorporate artichokes and mussels and set aside.

In another pan, sauté cod skin side down in a small amount of butter, 3 minutes. Turn and cook other side, 3 minutes depending on thickness. The fish will continue to cook when off heat.

To serve, spoon artichokes and mussels onto the plate and place cod on top. Strain garlic, thyme and bay leaves from stock and pour a little of this sauce around the fish.

This column written by Julia Watson originally appeared in the January 2020 edition of The Bugle.

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Chestnuts

11/12/2019

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When bon vivant French novelist and sports writer Antoine Blondin boasted, “There’s no caviar in Limousin, but we do have chestnuts,” he may not have visited the Perigord. If he had seen the green hills after green hills thickly forested in chestnut trees, he might have amended his statement to include that region too.

Chestnuts are an ancient crop, recorded across the Mediterranean as far back as 2100 BC. But 3rd century BC documents show the chestnut more valued for timber and charcoal than for its fruits, although the Ancient Greeks believed in its medicinal properties as a remedy for lacerations of the throat and lips. In France and Italy more recently, the chestnut’s leaves are turned into litter for cow byres.

Sweet chestnuts generally contain two and sometimes a flattened third nut, as opposed to the poisonous horse chestnut - the sweet chestnut’s distant cousin more sparsely scattered with stubby prickles, which provides the single shiny conker.

Carbonised sweet chestnuts were unearthed in a Roman villa engulfed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, and for centuries, chestnuts have been ground down along the Italian Ligurian coast for use as flour. Classic Italian trofie, the pasta served with the basil-and-pine nut pesto originating in Genoa, were made with chestnut flour. With the dearth of crops of corn and wheat during the second world war, across south west France, too, chestnuts were ground into flour (albeit one that doesn’t keep well), to make bread. Dense loaves of chestnut bread can still be found in the region, as can crepes made with chestnut flour and served with a chocolate spread.

In 1906, 63 varieties of finely-prickled French sweet chestnuts were registered, called chataignes, a derivation of the old French chastain. Nowadays, there are few different varieties, and only three main growing areas, one of them being the Dordogne/Limousin which grows 30% of the nation’s entire crop and is home to the much venerated Bouche de Betiza and the Marigoule varieties.

The sweet chestnut of the Perigord and the Limousin is distinct for containing only one nut known as a marron and ideal in shape for the production of marrons glaces. And what more perfect a seasonal candy to eat and to give at Christmas.

500g fresh chestnuts
For the syrup: 300g sugar and 300ml water

Score the chestnuts, cover in cold water and cook on a low boil for 8-10 minutes till tender. Drain and peel while warm.

Bring the sugar and water to the boil in a heavy-based pan then simmer for 10 minutes to make a syrup. Add chestnuts and simmer for 7-8 minutes. Remove from heat and leave them overnight in the syrup.

Bring the chestnuts back to the boil in the syrup and cook for 2 minutes. Remove pan from heat and let chestnuts cool overnight in the syrup. Repeat process 3 or more times over the next few days until all the syrup is absorbed.

Preheat the oven to 70°C. Spread the candied chestnuts across a wire rack over a tray covered in foil and place in oven. Prop its door open with a wooden spoon handle and leave 2 hours or until crusty. Remove, cool, and wrap each chestnut in greaseproof paper.

***

The following recipe makes good use of winter ingredients chestnuts and quince and is delicious with roast pork or any game including a Christmas goose. But for that, double or triple the ingredients depending on the size of the bird.

Quince and chestnuts pot-roasted pheasant
Serves 2

3 large stalks celery with leaves
1 quince
80g butter
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 pheasant
12 chestnuts, fresh, roasted and peeled, or from a jar, or frozen
6 fresh sage leaves
175ml Noilly Prat or white wine
175ml good stock

Preheat oven 180C.

Shave celery stalks with a potato peeler, trim their bottoms then cut into 2.5 cm lengths. Peel and core quince and slice in wedges.

Melt half the butter in a heavy-bottomed casserole over medium heat. Season pheasant and brown lightly on all sides. Remove to a warm plate. Use a paper towel to absorb any burned butter, leaving behind the golden caramel.

Melt remaining butter in pan. Add quince, chestnuts, sage, celery and its leaves. Season to taste. Pour over Noilly Prat, scraping the bottom of the pan with a spatula to incorporate the caramel, bring to the boil and bubble 2 minutes, add stock and bring back to boil then return bird and juices to pot. Cover and bake, 35 to 40 minutes.

Remove pan from oven then return uncovered to oven to brown pheasant, 5-10 minutes.

Rest on a warmed platter 15 minutes. Carve away the legs, then each breast in a single piece. Surround the pheasant with the vegetables and juices and serve.

This column written by Julia Watson originally appeared in the December 2019 edition of The Bugle.

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The 12 wines of Christmas

3/12/2019

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This is going to be a memorable year for the wines of Bergerac. Despite the wet spring and the hot, dry summer, we had just enough rain at the end of the season to refresh the grapes and dilute the sugars and thus the alcohol.

I was able to get a real sense of how good it could be on the first day of November at Chateau de Tiregand when Francois-Xavier de St €xupery showed me round his full vats and the first fermentation was well under way. Then came the treat. He opened a tiny tap in one big vat and let an inch or so pour out into my glass. That was the Merlot, full of fruit, light and easy but already round in the mouth.

Then he did the same for the vat of Cabernet Sauvignon and again for the Malbec. For the first time I really understood why the winemakers say Merlot for the fruit, cabernet sauvignon for the structure and Malbec for the spice. The hints of white pepper and cherries and blackberries were already apparent on the Malbec.

The cabernet was harder to assess as I tried to comprehend what exactly was meant by structure. Partly it was the tartness that comes from the light acids and the tannins which allow wine to mature and age well. Partly it was the sense of depth, of potential waiting to reach its full.

I was struck by the warmth of this liquid, in its halfway house between grape juice and becoming wine, when the yeasts are doing their work of converting sugar into alcohol. Red wines usually work best at this time at about 80-85 degrees fahrenheit. Much hotter than that and the yeasts go on strike. White wines are normally kept at a lower temperature, around 65-68 degrees.

These were early times in the making of the wine. The Cabernet had only been in the big stainless steel vat for three days. And this was only the first part of the fermentation process. The next process, which often takes place in the oak barrels, is called the malolactic fermentation. It is not strictly speaking a fermentation at all, since it is not the yeasts doing the work but a bacteria called Oenococcus which takes in the tart malic acid and turns it into the milder, creamier lactic acid. (Yes, the same that we find in milk). That is why some wines are called fat, from the creaminess that rests in the mouth.

Making the wine is a natural but complex and fascinating process. Fermentation makes the carbon-rich sugar molecules split, releasing carbon dioxide and becoming acetaldehyde which in the absence of oxygen becomes ethanol.

With 450 of the very expensive (up to 1000 euros for the best quality) oak barrels in his cellars, Francois-Xavier has something close to half a million euros worth of wood, before we even think about the wine that the barrels hold. And it is not just the quality of the oak that matters but the interior toasting. When I saw the word noisette (hazelnut) on the side of his new barrels I asked in my ignorance if he was using a different wood. He smiled forgivingly and said No, it referred to the colour of the toasting inside the barrel.

Noisette was a light toasting which would give a hint of caramel and cinnamon. A medium tasting would give a touch of honey and coffee and a dark toasting would convey smoke and butterscotch, even a suggestion of molasses.

If you are allowed to roam around a chai, the place where the wine is made, you will see incomprehensible chalked letters and numbers. These identify not just the grape but also the specific area of the vineyard along with the age of the vines. Ch de Tiregand uses its younger vines to make their second wine, Montalbanie. The mature vines are used to make its classic Pecharmant and in very good years the wine from the best parts of the vineyard will become a Grand Millesime, a great vintage.

Francois-Xavier is quietly confident that 2019 will be a Grand Millesime year, but don’t even think about being allowed to taste some until late 2021, maybe 2022. And having recently been awed by a magnum of the Grand Millesime 2009, I wouldn’t think of opening the 2019 until at the earliest 2025. And I’m hoping to still be around then to do so.

So for my annual twelve days of Christmas drinking recommendations:
Reds

Ch de Tiregand Grand Millesime 2015. €21.00
Ch de la Jaubertie, cuvee Mirabelle red. €16.90
Clos de Breil. cuvee Odyssee red. 2016. €12.10
Ch Puy Servain, cuvee Songe. The 2011 is drinking perfectly now. €25.50
Ch de Belingard, cuvee Reserve. €10.70
Ch Feely, cuvee Grace, 2015. €20.

Whites

Ch de Payral, Petite Fugue, 2017 €8.00
J de Savignac, cuvee Lisa, 2018, €8.50
Ch de la Vieille Bergerie, cuvee Quercus, 2018, €11.00
Les Tours de Verdots, 2018, €10.
Ch de Lestevenie brut, €9.00 (the best fizzy wine in the Bergerac).
Ch Le Fage Monbazillac, 2015, €22.00.

This column written by Martin Walker originally appeared in the December 2019 edition of The Bugle.

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Cauliflower

31/10/2019

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A few years ago, before the persecution of Rohingya people became clear, I went backpacking round Burma. (The locals separate themselves from supporters of the Myanmar military regime by persisting in calling their country by its old established name.)

It was an eye-opening introduction to a remarkably beautiful country. Once upon a time, its people took Keeping Up With the Joneses to a degree Patricia Routledge’s Hyacinth Bouquet would have accorded the highest respect. On the plains of Bagan alone, an area 104 kilometres square, 3822 surviving temples and pagodas vie with each other in degrees of stature and grandeur. Some of them are as small as an outside loo, some as large as a tool shed, all built so close together you sometimes have to squeeze between them.

Between 1044 and 1287, Bagan was the capital of the Pagan Empire. Its rulers and subjects built more than 1000 stupas, 10,000 small temples and 3000 monasteries. Why?, I asked a woman passing by on a bicycle. She shrugged. “One villager builds a temple on his piece of land to his god of worship. His neighbour feels obliged to follow, and builds one bigger and better.”

When you see the cauliflowers piled mountainously high in every local market, you might think the Burmese are doing the same today with vegetables. It’s an astonishing country of abundant produce, the great proportion of it grown on man-made floating islands dotting the 113-square kilometres of Inle Lake in the centre of the nation. And its cauliflowers are not the size of a baby’s head. They are the size of a beach ball.

They seemed so incongruous, displayed alongside mounds of bak choi and aubergines and green vegetables more obviously associated with Indian and Chinese dishes. Cauliflowers, more happily grown in cool daytime temperatures, are to me a vegetable of Northern Europe.

But the people of Burma/Myanmar don’t smother their cauliflowers in cheese and white sauces. They steam their florets and turn them while warm in finely chopped mint, sesame seeds, chillies, fried garlic, and a drizzle of a tahini-like sauce for a delicious one-dish meal or salad.

It was the English who introduced the cauliflower to a hotter part of the world - to India in 1822. Long before, Pliny had been familiar with the cauliflower, referring to it in the 1st century AD as a pleasant-tasting cabbage he called a ‘cyma’. In the 12th and 13th centuries, Arab botanists pointed to Cyprus as the origin of the plant - another hot country. But the then French rulers of that island in the 16th century began to trade the seeds into western Europe and on into France from Genoa.

Even with such a distinguished lineage, cauliflowers have long suffered the burden of a poor reputation that is mostly the result of being dreadfully overcooked, a circumstance not well disguised by coating it thickly in a cheesy bechamel sauce.

Then suddenly, about a couple of years ago, British hipsters decided the cauliflower would replace kale as the fashion-forward dish of the day. (Whoever decided kale was fashionable? And why?) It may have been due to the rise in vegetarianism, or to the fact that cooks began to recognise that cauliflowers, like haricot beans, and brussels sprouts, and other often maligned vegetables, have acquired ruined repute because they can slide from crunchy to sludgy in a matter of boiling minutes. So take care with this recipe.

Roast cauliflower steaks with spinach pesto

Serves 4

1 whole cauliflower, washed, leaves removed and reserved to roast or steam with another dish
Olive oil
Juice of half a lemon
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat oven to 200C.

Cut the stem of the cauliflower to stand it upright. Cut down into 2.5 cm slices. Oil a baking sheet, rub the steaks both sides with olive oil, squeeze over the lemon juice, season and roast for 15 minutes and serve with a generous tablespoon of pesto.

Alternatively, rub both sides with olive oil, lay in a very hot dry pan and cook over high heat about 5 minutes each side until soft and charred, squeezing the lemon juice over at the finish.

Spinach pesto

60g fresh spinach leaves, well-washed and stemmed
15g flat leaf parsley
65g walnuts, toasted
20g Parmesan cheese, freshly grated
3 garlic cloves, peeled and roughly chopped
4 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste

Put all ingredients into food processor and process to a fine paste the thickness of double cream. Season to taste and scrape into a glass container, loosening the pesto with a little warm water if necessary. Top with a thin coat of olive oil to prevent the pesto from discolouring and store in the refrigerator. Will keep for several months.

This column written by Julia Watson originally appeared in the November 2019 edition of The Bugle.

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Celery

7/10/2019

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My father used to call the once winter-season vegetable coming into its best right now ‘cerely’, much as my eldest daughter, when little, used to call trucks ‘rollies’, which made lorries seem so much more effervescent and roadworthy.

Celery is that dieter’s darling - an edible that burns more calories in the digesting of it than it delivers in the eating of it. But it’s a vegetable that doesn’t inspire much respect, although a ‘mirepoix’ or ‘soffrito’ would be lost without it. Combined with finely diced onion and carrot, celery provides that foundation flavouring to so many braised dishes, from soups to stews.

And yet, even while being patronised, celery has proudly survived many decades of food fashion as its own self. From the 1830s to early 1900s, it was such an expensive vegetable, because of the care and attention it demanded in its cultivation, that wealthy families displayed it on the dining table in water like flowers in ‘celery vases’, intricate glass pieces now part of museum collections.

In a not too distant decade past, soft blue cheese was smeared down each stalk’s gutter for passing around with wicked cocktails. In the US, it has always been served - incongruously but oh-so-rightly - with spicy-hot chicken wings. Jamie Oliver gave it pizzazz when he took a whole head and sliced it finely right across in thin half moons, dressing it with vinaigrette as a new kind of refreshing salad to which, in Jamie lingo, you could add ‘other pukka stuff’.

You can’t make elegant Waldorf salad without a head of celery. A chicken salad of yesterday’s roast mixed up in a generous blanketing of mustardy mayonnaise with handfuls of toasted walnuts and capers is cranked up more than a notch by a folding in of copious amounts of sliced celery.

Celery, Apium graveolens var. graveolens, is not to be confused with celeriac, Apium graveolens var. Rapaceum, of which more another time. It’s been around f-o-r-e-v-e-r. (What decent vegetable hasn’t?) It was originally a marshland plant, which may explain why you might be finding it hard to cultivate in the hot and dry south west France. It was found around the Mediterranean in salty, marshy soil near the coast. It isn’t too happy in soil that lacks a salt content or isn’t constantly damp.

Like leeks, it needs earthing up as it grows, in order to develop that white stalk. Celery that has been left unearthed to its own wayward devices in the potager develops a bitter and emphatic flavour hard to welcome in the mouth.

But let that tangle go on to flower, and you’ll have seeds to use as a spice and, if you are homeopathically inclined, to apply in various cures. Back in time, celery seeds were employed by Ayurvedic practitioners in India to treat colds, flu, arthritis, some diseases of the liver and spleen, and against water retention. This versatile seed is still used as a diuretic. It promises a number of other medical benefits, all of which tend to be prefaced by the ambivalent ‘hedge-your-bets’ verb: ‘May’.

Why should the poor maligned head of celery be held responsible for so much? It’s deliciously crunchy, it’s a healthy snack, it makes your slow-braised recipes taste good - what more do you want? It’s not celery’s fault it cooks out limp and grey.

Here’s a more colourful use for it, which goes well with roast meats and with game, and makes a delicious vegetarian dish or supper dish served with no more than a crusty baguette and perhaps a salad on the side.

Braised celery with dried cèpes
Serves 4

200ml chicken stock
10g dried cèpes
70g butter
4 whole bunches of celery, outer stalks peeled with a potato peeler
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
1 small clove garlic, bruised
2 tablespoons capers
50ml vin de noix or Madeira
Salt and freshly milled white pepper
2 tablespoons parsley, finely chopped

Preheat oven to 180C.

Pour hot chicken stock over dried cèpes and leave to soak 15 minutes.

Melt butter in an ovenproof dish. Peel off the fibers from the outer stalks of the celery hearts with a potato peeler. Halve each celery heart down the middle or tie stalks together and cut heart across its middle, reserving remaining loose stalks for other use. Gently stew in butter till colouring lightly then add vinegar. Reduce liquid at a bubbling simmer to nearly nothing then add stock and cèpes. Bring to the boil and add garlic, capers, vin de noix or Madeira and season.

Cover dish with foil and bake 40-60 minutes. Check once or twice. If liquid is drying out, add a little more stock and lower heat. If there is too much, remove dish to stovetop and boil down over high heat. The celery and sauce should be syrupy and golden. Remove the garlic, sprinkle with parsley and serve.

Hint: To remove the tough fibres from the outer stalks of a bunch of celery, hold the bunch of celery hearts in one hand and run the potato peeler with the other hand down each of the outer stalks.

This column written by Julia Watson originally appeared in the October 2019 edition of The Bugle.

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