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Brussels sprouts

23/12/2021

The most popular food at the Christmas feast is not the turkey, it’s the roast potatoes. I’ve never seen the point of turkey myself, given the other options of similar better tasting birds like goose or capon. Chicken, even, if it is one that has developed its flavour by scratching around the garden and being fed scraps off the kitchen table. Bought chicken, even the fancy yellow ones, tend to be as bland as turkey.

Coming in at Number 8 on the list of favourites is, believe it or not, the brussels sprout. More usually maligned, the vegetable deserves respect. It’s been a victim for too long of that unforgivable British cooking technique, the dedicated overcook.

Cultivar of a subgroup of the cabbage family with a subtly different taste, it is, somewhat surprisingly, a native of the Mediterranean region. Very early versions are thought to have been found in Ancient Rome. It first appeared in northern Europe during the 5th century. The first reference to it appears in 1587. But it had begun to be cultivated for its edible buds in the 13th century near Brussels, which gave these gemmifera (bud producers) their name. (This is useful information to pass on to those who insist there’s no ‘s’ on the first word).

Belgium is still the largest producer on the Continent, with 82,000 metric tons a year. While the Brits grow a similar amount, they don’t export them. French settlers to Louisiana in the 18th century introduced them into the United States. Not a bad record for a vegetable so many people consider despicable.

Perhaps all they need to do is try a different recipe. They are considerably uplifted by the addition of chunks of chestnut and/or crispy bacon bits or lardons. But did you know what the zing of curls of lemon zest can achieve? Toasted hazelnuts are another complement.

Roasting rather than boiling brussel sprouts is the technique currently popular. However, it can make them bitter and leave them unpleasantly crunchy. A better method that brings out their sugar is to cut them in half to produce a broader surface and sizzle them in oil and butter, cut side down in a large frying pan over low to medium heat for 5 minutes. Then slam a lid on the pan for a further 5 minutes for the brussels sprouts to wilt. If you then want to give them a Middle Eastern twist, before serving, throw in a handful of pomegranate seeds and drizzle over a little pomegranate molasses to add a crunch and acidity.

You don’t have to wait until Christmas to eat brussels sprouts. This vegetarian cheesy gratin makes a soothing one-dish meal all winter long.

600g Brussels sprouts, trimmed and halved if large
1 tablespoon olive oil
50g unsalted butter
2 shallots, finely chopped
50g flour
750ml milk
1 large tablespoon grainy Dijon mustard
100ml creme fraiche
150g Cantal or other strong-flavoured cheese, grated
40g dried breadcrumbs or Panko
2 thyme sprigs, leaves only
60g skin-free hazelnuts, roughly chopped

Preheat the oven to 220C.

Bring a large pan of lightly salted water to the boil. Add the sprouts and cook for 3 minutes then drain and set aside.

To make the bechamel sauce, heat the oil and butter in a medium saucepan until the butter is foaming. Add the shallots and cook over a low heat stirring occasionally until soft. Tip in the flour and cook for 2 minutes. Remove from the heat and in several pours, slowly whisk in the milk to incorporate it into the flour paste, continuously whisking until you get a smooth sauce.

Return to the heat. Add the mustard and simmer for 2 minutes. Keep on whisking. Slowly incorporate the creme fraiche, followed by the cheese. Season to taste with freshly ground black pepper, and salt if it needs any.

Toss together the dried breadcrumbs, thyme leaves and hazelnuts. Tip the sprouts into a deep 30 x 20cm ovenproof dish and pour over the sauce. Top with the breadcrumb mixture. Bake in the centre of the oven for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown and bubbling.

Leave to rest for at least 10 mins before serving.

This dish can be made well in advance before the final baking step. It goes particularly well with any cut of pork or ham but makes a substantial one-dish meal on its own. Crispy bacon bits can substitute for the hazelnut crumbs for a different take.

This column written by Julia Watson originally appeared in the December 2021 edition of The Bugle.

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Tangerines

26/11/2021

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At the toe of our Christmas stockings each year nestled a walnut and a tangerine. They signalled the end of the presents to unwrap in a consoling fashion - edible treats you could eat immediately without censure. Their first appearance in the shops heralded the on-coming celebration.

These days, though, tangerines and their fellows are available pretty much year round. They are part of a large crew of citrus fruit that embraces three different classifications of the orange: clementines, satsumas, mandarins, and various hybrids including the tangelo and the tangor.

Technically, the tangerine is a mandarin orange and treated as a variety of Citrus reticulata, the botanical name for the mandarin. It’s also known as Citrus tangerina, named for its origins in Tangier, Morocco. But while the names are pretty interchangeable, a tangerine is a mandarin but a mandarin isn’t always a tangerine. The Citrus Variety Collection of the University of California lists 167 different hybrids and varieties of mandarins, with clementines and satsumas falling into the category.

The mandarin is the ancestor of all other types - the original orange, if you like. The orange isn’t a pure fruit. It’s a hybrid between a mandarin and a pomelo. It originated in the vast region that embraces Southern China, Northeast India and Burma. The earliest mention of it comes in Chinese literature in 314BC. Of all fruit trees, it’s now the most cultivated in the world.

Smaller than the common orange, tangerines, clementines and mandarins are also sweeter and easier to peel than the orange and with a flavour far more intense. That peel dries particularly well (slowly in the oven at a low temperature) for using as a cooking spice in beef and lamb stews since they have much less bitter white pith than the orange.

Tangerines were first cultivated by an American, Major Atway, in Palatka, Florida. He is thought to have imported them from Tangier, to develop as a distinct crop. In 1843, he sold his groves to N.H. Moragne, who gave his name to a tangerine that in turn produced a seedling of the Dancy tangerine. Until the 1970s, this was one of the most popular varieties sold in the US. These days, though, it’s too sensitive and delicate for the voracious commercial demands of transport and sale, and only fruits every other year besides which doesn’t suit the business.

Now they sit in the supermarket, waiting patiently for the Christmas stocking and the feast table. But if you want to get ahead on your Christmas gifts, go for clementines. They respond readily to being poached, which turns them into great presents. You have plenty of time now - and this recipe takes very little of it - to preserve a stock of them in large jars. You can also eat the recipe at once. Just wait for it to cool down, and serve with creme fraiche and perhaps a plate of cantucci or plain vanilla cookies.

For 1 large jar

500g clementines (they will shrink)
250 g sugar
500 ml water
2 cm piece of fresh ginger root plus 1/2 tsp sliced ginger root
1 stick cinnamon
1 star anise (optional)
1/2 tsp cloves
75 ml Grand Marnier, brandy or rum (optional)
4 cloves

Scrub then prick the fruit all over with a cocktail stick.

Bring the water slowly to the boil with the sugar, ginger, cinnamon, star anise and cloves. Boil rapidly for about 5 minutes then add the pierced fruits. Bring back to boil and then lower heat a bit and simmer for about 1 hour or until the fruit has gone soft.

Spoon the clementines into a sterilized jar. Bring the syrup back to the boil and up to a temperature of 113C. It will have thickened and reduced by now. Remove the spices.

Let the syrup cool a little then pour it into the jar with the fruit. Add the brandy or rum. Include the fresh slices of ginger and a couple of new cloves. Seal the jar and give it a good shake to mix everything together.

Store somewhere dark and cool for 2 weeks before using.

This column written by Julia Watson originally appeared in the November 2021 edition of The Bugle.

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Cabbage

26/10/2021

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The cook at my school was an elderly woman in twilight blue floor-length dress with white pinny over it named Fanny who had been in the kitchen ever since she had left school herself. When she turned 80, a major British national came to interview her. They did it again when she turned 90. She was persuaded to retire when she turned 93 as the steps down to her basement lair were made of stone worn by centuries of scraping feet and dangerous to even the youngest pupil who made a way down to the stinking dining room.

It stank, as did the rest of the school, of slowly stewed cabbage. Every Monday and Wednesday, all the years of our scholastic lives, Fanny and her team cooked us cabbage-meat-and-potato. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we had salad-meat-and-potato. On Fridays, the best day, we had sausage-beans-and-potato. All of it reeked of stewed cabbage, even Friday’s treat.

If you’re British, it’s likely you have a similar experience in your own past. It’s odd that of all the foodstuffs we’re reputed as a nation to abuse, the cabbage is one of the vegetables most easy to cook and - in other cuisines - respected and made thoroughly delicious.

Recently, though, cabbage has been enjoying a culinary renaissance, particularly the Hispi variety, that pointed heart -shaped cabbage whose Instagram influencers love it cut in quarters and charred. It’s as good blanched for a couple of minutes in salted water then stirred into very buttery mashed potato for colcannon, the Irish dish, as it is finely sliced and spiced up by quickly sauteeing it with as much finely chopped garlic, chilli and ginger as you like then dobbing it with soy sauce before serving. Either of these go well with a grilled fillet of salmon or a pork chop, or the latter version just with steamed brown rice.

But the common white Dutch football cabbage makes a good sweet-and-sour version, excellent as a side dish with just about any meat. Finely shred it. Heat up a couple of tablespoons of vegetable oil in a wok or deep saute pan, throw in the cabbage and stir it about quickly to coat it, then toss over 1 teaspoon of salt, 2 tablespoons of sugar and 3 tablespoons of vinegar that you’ve previously mixed together in a small glass. Toss all this together quickly so as to preserve the crunch, then serve.

In South West France, however, you should comfort yourself over the approach of winter with its renowned Garbure. A rustic meal in a tureen, this gets even better if made the day before, allowing its flavours to develop. If you want to eat it the most common French way, ladle out the vegetable soup separately with the meats following as the next course and serve with cornichons, mustard, and a green salad. But soup and meats served together make an impressive and substantial one-dish meal.

1¾ litres water
250g salt pork belly, chopped into large chunks
250g white haricot beans (Tarbais are best), soaked overnight
1 duck or goose carcass (optional)
2 large onions, one peeled and stuck with 2 cloves, the other roughly chopped
2 leeks, the white plus 2 inches/5cm green, trimmed and washed
1 tablespoon butter
3 small white turnips, peeled and chopped
1 bouquet garni
Salt and pepper to taste
250g potatoes, peeled and roughly chopped
175g Jambon de Campagne with its bone, or other smoked ham
6 pieces of confit de canard
1 small cabbage, shredded
6 thick slices baguette, preferably stale, toasted and rubbed with a clove of garlic

Fill a large pan with the water. Add the pork belly and beans and carcass. Bring to the boil, skimming frequently. Add the onion stuck with cloves, turn down the heat and simmer 1 hour.

In a sauté pan over low heat, soften the leeks and chopped onions in butter. Add to the soup with the turnips, bouquet garni, and salt and pepper to taste. Simmer 45 minutes. Discard the bones, carcass and clove-studded onion. Add the potatoes and Jambon de Campagne. Bring back to the boil over medium heat, then reduce the heat and simmer for 30 minutes. Add the confit and cabbage. Simmer for 20-30 minutes more.

Put a slice of toast into the bottom of each soup bowl before serving the vegetable soup alone then followed by the meats and vegetables as the main course with cornichons and mustard. Or everything together at once for a hearty one-dish meal.

This column written by Julia Watson originally appeared in the October 2021 edition of The Bugle.

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Blackberries

24/9/2021

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When I ran away to live in a tiny village on the top left hand side of Greece, opposite Corfu and beneath the mountains of Albania, I was taught to forage by its venerable women. In late spring and early autumn, we would climb the foothills with sharp pointed knives to cut wild herbs and greens, or stab into the soil to lift edible roots.

What astonished me, given their vigilance, was the way they ignored the blackberries growing in profusion around them. This may have been because historically, the plants, stems and bark were brewed for medical use as a cure for stomach ulcers. I feel honoured to say I could repay their generosity over sharing with me their plant knowledge to show them how blackberries could be made into compotes to go with yogurt or a version of the jellies so popular in Greece to offer a visitor with a tiny cup of strong coffee.

Not so long ago, the Black Berry was a popular Canadian brand of smartphones, beloved of serious techno geeks, and killed off by its insistence on sticking with its own in-house systems in 2016 while the rest of the world took up with Android and iOS. Now all we’re left with is the fruit, a relation, would you believe of the rose family.

It’s also related to the raspberry, which you may have guessed when attempting to lever out the tiny seeds of both from the crevices in your teeth. The significant difference between them is the fact that the stem or ‘torus’ remains inside the blackberry when picked, while with the raspberry it remains behind on the branch.

The Greeks may not have employed the fruit. But its earliest known consumption has been established in the remains of a Danish woman known as the Haraldskaer Woman, preserved in a bog and dating from around 2,500 years ago. Then there is a 1696 English record of the fruit, the London Pharmacopoeia, showing blackberries were used to make wines and cordials. Think about making a Cassis-style liqueur with them.

The berries, leaves and stems have also been used to dye fabrics and hair. Native Americans have even been recorded using the stems to make rope. Planting the shrubs around buildings, crops and livestock to create protective barriers against enemies and large wild animals was common both in Europe and in North America. But if all you want to do is eat them, you should know that as well as being free if you go out and pick them, blackberries offer the highest antioxidant activity of commonly consumed fruits, next to pomegranates. 100 grams of them deliver 10.2 grams of carbohydrates, 5.3 of which are fibre, double the fibre content of blueberries more usually punted for that ability.

You can tell if a person comes from the north or the south of England by how they describe the fruit. In the south, it’s a blackberry. In the north, it’s a bramble, named after the impenetrable thicket on which it grows.

Given blackberries mature at the same time as apples, it makes an obvious pairing for delicious seasonal pies and crumbles. But think about using them as a main course ingredient. This recipe pairs them with grilled chicken, extending the use of the barbecue just a few weeks more. But here it’s cooked under an oven grill, in a recipe that works equally well with ducks’ legs and thighs.

170g blackberries
1/4 cup water
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons cold butter cut into cubes
1 tablespoon whole-grain mustard
4 chicken thighs
4 drumsticks
salt and black pepper
Flat-leaf parsley

Heat the grill to medium. In a small saucepan, combine blackberries, water, white wine vinegar, and sugar and simmer, mashing occasionally, until the liquid has reduced to about 2 tablespoons, 18 to 20 minutes.

Stir in the butter, a cube at a time, and the mustard. Pour half the glaze into a bowl and reserve.

Pat the chicken pieces dry on paper towels. Season with salt and black pepper. Grill, skin-sides up, covered with a sheet of aluminium foil for 15 minutes. Uncover, baste with some of the glaze and grill, turning and basting repeatedly until cooked through, 10 to 12 minutes.

Sprinkle with fresh flat-leaf parsley and serve with the remaining glaze.

This column written by Julia Watson originally appeared in the September 2021 edition of The Bugle.

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Veal

26/8/2021

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If the goal in summer is to spend as little time in the kitchen as possible, turn towards slow-cooked ingredients that release their richness after hours in the oven so you can release yourself for hours outside.

The pulses and legumes like dried beans and chickpeas so ubiquitous in the dishes of the Middle East make dependable summer fallbacks that can be set in motion the night before with a soak. But these can also be quite heavy to digest. Not that this is a drawback - in that part of the world there is great respect for the afternoon siesta if you’re serving them at lunch. For an evening meal, a slow-cooked meat might serve your digestion better.

Certain cuts are particularly handy at this time of year. American men, apron-clad, know the value of brisket, slapping it with secret sauces standing at the barbecue. The French know this with the pot-au-feu. The Italians know this with osso buco.

Osso buco is a slow-cooked Lombard speciality, usually served with risotto alla Milanese. The rice comes from the Piedmont, the area west of Lombardy, but the dish will shine if you only serve a salad and perhaps a bowl of potato puree.

The cut comes from across the shank, which gives you the chance to eat the bone marrow, an opportunity I encourage you not to avoid. Slather it over a slice of toasted tourte and sprinkle it with gremolata. This is the fine minching together of garlic, parsley and lemon zest that an osso buco is served with. It may make the main course of my last meal on earth, if I’m given any choice in the matter. I certainly won’t need my teeth for it - it’s so soft.

Veal rightly fell out of favour when we learned what inhumane tortures calves were subjected to. In order to achieve flesh as white as pork, they were confined to crates, often unable to stand.

But responsible farmers raising calves without cruelty produce a meat called ‘rosy’ veal.

It’s less likely that you’ll find this kind of veal at a supermarket. Instead, find a living, breathing butcher with whom you can discuss how theirs has been raised - not a question you can ask a cellophane package. Farmers’ markets are a reliable source.

In South-West France, farmers check on the health of the calf by looking first in their eyes, then in the intimate area exposed by raising their tails and spreading their buttock cheeks. Any red veins revealed at either end are an indication the calf has not been raised sous la mère (milk-fed), or possibly of sickness.

Ossobuco goes in the oven for 1½ hours, a bonus when you want to be out of the kitchen and with your friends.

Serves 4

Preheat the oven to 175C/350F

Flour for dredging the meat, seasoned with pepper only (salt will dry the meat out)
4 cuts of veal shin, 4.5cm thick
60ml cup olive oil
55g butter
2 medium onions, peeled and finely diced
2 stalks of celery, finely diced
2 small carrots, washed and finely diced
145ml white wine
2 tablespoons tomato paste
145ml stock
400g fresh tomatoes, blanched, skinned and chopped, or 1 400g can peeled tomatoes
1 large sprig fresh thyme
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Bunch of flat leaf parsley, stalks discarded
1 lemon, scrubbed
1 large clove garlic, peeled

Dredge the meat in the flour and shake off the excess. Brown the pieces in 3 tablespoons of oil. Set them in a pan you can put in the oven, close together to prevent the marrow from falling out.

Wipe out the frying pan. Add the remaining oil and the butter to gently saute the mirepoix of onions, celery and carrots till soft, about 15 minutes. Pour in the wine, scraping up the vegetable caramel.

Raise the heat and reduce till almost gone then stir in the tomato paste. Dilute with the stock, season, add the tomatoes and bring to the boil. Pour over the veal, add the thyme and cover tightly. Place in the oven to braise for 1 ½ hours.

Check during cooking the liquid hasn’t evaporated. Serve from the pan with the gremolata, made by finely chopping the parsley leaves, garlic and the zest of the lemon together, sprinkled over the top. Eat with risotto Milanese, polenta or pureed potatoes.

This column written by Julia Watson originally appeared in the August 2021 edition of The Bugle.

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Cucumbers

25/7/2021

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Cucumbers drove my father to distraction. He was an accomplished kitchen gardener, proud of his tomatoes and beans, who made a ritual out of the picking of his sweetcorn, and created a fine and productive asparagus bed. But his cucumbers curled. It didn’t affect their taste. But to my father’s aesthetic standards, that vegetable comma signified failure.

It really wasn’t his fault. The condition is common enough to have its own name: crooking. It’s caused by any number of things, from pollination to poor growing conditions and pest interference. The situation was slightly improved when he began to plant these creeping vines not outside along the ground but in his glasshouse, in pots, to hang down heavily from stakes.

Curly or straight, their shape didn’t affect their flavour. Uniformly, his cucumbers were exceptionally cucumber-y, which was why, until recently, I loathed them.

What was the point of these watery vegetables - 95% water, indeed - that leaked all over a 1970s mixed salad. That water does contain electrolytes, however, which is useful if you’re dehydrated, and they do provide various nutrients.

But where they score, if you’re struggling to slither into your bathing attire, is they’re low in calories, fat, and cholesterol. Then, having laid too long in the sun, you can smother yourself in slices of cucumber to soothe the skin and reduce the inflammation and swelling. A taxing night on the tiles? Slices of cucumber laid over the eyes decrease morning-after puffiness.

For even more beauty applications, cucumber blended in a processor and sieved makes a natural toner, left on the skin for half an hour then rinsed, that can help clear the pores. Equal quantities of cucumber juice and yogurt makes a space back that helps dry skin.

So what of their qualities as a food?

They’ve a lovely crunch but an illusive flavour that some compare to the melon which is not such a stretch when you learn that the cucumber, being part of the same Cucurbitaceae family as the melon, is, in fact, a fruit. I prefer the melon. Left to ripen to yellow, cucumbers become unpleasantly bitter and are good for nothing, though there are some deluded people who consider them fit for soup in this state.

While cucumbers at their peak are a key component of gazpacho, left to feature on their own there’s not a lot to commend them. With, in my humble opinion, one exception: the cucumber sandwich.

Along with strawberries, in my family these signified summer. My father would very thinly slice a malted granary loaf and spread it with soft butter. He’d peel a cucumber and slice that as finely as he could, layering it over the buttered bread. Salt was sprinkled over before it was covered with another buttered slice of bread. Then he’d cut off the crusts, divide the sandwich in two and then into slender fingers.

Aside from grating a cucumber into Greek tzatziki with a generous tablespoon of finely chopped mint, those sandwiches were about the only way I could be bothered with cucumber.

Until recently, that is, when I discovered Smacked Cucumber Salad. It’s a Chinese dish, which is no surprise, given that cucumbers originate in South East Asia. But don’t let that stop you making this dish in south west France. It goes amazingly well with duck dishes, cutting the richness of the bird. It’s best made with those small courgette-length Middle Eastern cukes but a regular one is fine.

1 cucumber (about 300g)
½-1 tablespoon salt
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 tablespoons caster sugar
2 teaspoon soy sauce
4 tablespoons Chinese rice vinegar or red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon red chilli flakes or more to taste
2 tablespoons sesame oil

Slice the cucumber lengthways in half and lay the two halves cut side down on a board. Smack them hard along their length with a rolling pin or meat cleaver. Slice the halves diagonally into 1cm pieces.

Put the slices in a sieve or colander, toss with salt, and set above a bowl to exude their water for 20 minutes.

In a separate bowl, mix together the remaining ingredients. Shake the cucumber to eliminate any remaining liquid then decant into a serving bowl, pour over the sauce, mix thoroughly and serve at once.

This column written by Julia Watson originally appeared in the July 2021 edition of The Bugle.

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Strawberry shortcake

23/6/2021

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We’re in the pink! It’s come around again, strawberry season. The Dordogne may lay claim to strawberries - understandably, given they’re accorded DOC status. But they were first bred in Brittany, in the 1750s. Up till then, wild strawberries were the common fruit.

It’s an ancient one. Roman literature mentions it in reference to medicinal application. What diseases they used it to cure isn’t known, but from the 1600s on, the entire plant was applied in the treatment of depression. It appears in 15th century illuminated manuscripts by European monks. It shows up in works of the same period by English minituarists and in paintings by Italian, Flemish and German artists. Charles V, who ruled France from 1364 to 1380, had 12000 strawberry plants in his royal garden. The gourmet who came up with the heavenly combination of strawberries and cream was an archbishop, Thomas Wolsey, cardinal of the Catholic Church, controller of the affairs of state of the English court of Henry VIII and eventually charged with treason, a regular habit of that monarch. Luckily for Wolsey, he died on his way back to London to answer the charges.

A common garden fruit, strawberries are, uncommonly, both masculine and feminine. The very first species was the wild woodland strawberry, Fragaria vesca. Originally, these male woodland strawberries were crossed with the male Fragaria virginiana from the state of Virginia in northeast America to cultivate a larger fruit than the wild variety.

F. virginiana is one of the two great New World ancestors without which we wouldn’t have the strawberry of today, and the many varieties found across south-west France. The other ancestor is the female Fragaria chiloensis, the beach strawberry, brought from Chile in 1714 by Amédée-François Frézier, French military engineer, mathematician, spy, and explorer, whose name is now theirs, albeit spelled differently. (This is for those of you who enjoy pop quizzes.)

The Mapuche and Huilliche Indians of Chile had been cultivating strawberries with female flowers, which is the plant the Europeans brought back to cross with their own fruit. They had little success, until the middle of the 18th century when gardeners around north west France noticed that when woodland strawberries and Virginian strawberries, both male, were planted in between rows of female Chilean strawberries, the latter would produce large and abundant fruits.

These days, though, it’s Fragaria x ananass with its scent of pineapple which is prime in cultivating species for commercial production - none of which you need to know for a pop quiz. But what might stump your competitors is the fact that the strawberry isn’t a berry at all. It’s what’s called ‘an aggregate accessory fruit’. You may have wondered, biting into one, why a strawberry’s seeds are on the exterior of the fruit, not inside. Each of those tiny seeds is not, in fact, a seed. It is one of the ovaries of the strawberry flower with a seed inside it. The fleshy part of the fruit is simpy a receptacle to hold these ovaries.

For your final pop quiz question: which, in a business where, in 2017, global production of strawberries was 9.2 million tonnes, is the world’s top producer of strawberries? Clue: it is not anywhere in Europe. It is - no surprise, really - China.

Strawberry shortcakes, generally considered an American classic, are originally British, great with a game of cricket and a jug of Pimms. Basically, they’re scones. So use your own recipe if you prefer.

Serves 4

400g strawberries, hulled and washed
30g+1 tablespoon caster sugar
85g+3 tablespoons cold butter
300g flour
¼ teaspoon fine salt
2 ½ teaspoons baking powder
300ml thick cream for whipping
1 egg yolk, beaten with 1 tablespoon milk

Preheat oven to 220C.

Grease a baking sheet. Quarter the strawberries. Put a third into a bowl with 30g sugar and crush roughly with a fork. Fold the cut strawberries into the mush.

Sift flour into a mixing bowl, whisk in remaining sugar, salt and baking powder. Grate in cold butter then rub into the dry ingredients until it turns into coarse breadcrumbs. Stir in 160ml of the cream to form a soft dough, adding more if needed. Knead quickly until just smooth, tip onto a floured surface and roll to 5mm thick. With a 6cm cutter, cut out 8 rounds. Set half on the baking sheet, melt the 3 tablespoons of butter and brush the tops of the rounds with it then put other halves on top of them. Brush those with beaten egg, bake 20 minutes till risen and gold.

Pull them apart. Brush middles with any remaining butter. Set aside to cool on a rack.

Pour the cream into a large bowl and whip to soft peaks. Put a scoop of cream on four bottoms. Spoon the strawberry mush generously over each then lay the remaining scone halves on top and serve.

This column written by Julia Watson originally appeared in the June 2021 edition of The Bugle.

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Asparagus

26/5/2021

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It’s interesting how much time we invest in growing grass to eat, when we spend a good deal of our weekends uprooting grass from borders where we prefer to see flowers. The grass in this case is asparagus, also known as sparrow grass.

It takes dedication to create an asparagus bed. They can be established from seed if you’re prepared to wait even longer than you have to when planting bare-root asparagus crowns. Any spears that appear from these must be zealously ignored for the first two years after planting. To pick them before will stunt future production. But once established, if properly tended, a single plant should produce 25 spears a year for the same number of years. My father devoted enough care and attention to his sparrow grass bed, as he called it, that our family of four feasted off it for most of June.

Asparagus is unusual in that it is its own genus, although it used to be classified as a member of the lily family. Found across Europe and western Asia, it’s an ancient flowering plant, featured as an offering in an Egyptian frieze dating back to 3000BC.

Emperor Augustus (63BC to AD14) even created the Asparagus Fleet to transport the delicacy. He came up with “Faster than cooking asparagus”, as an expression for speed. What the ancient Greeks and Romans didn’t eat fresh in spring, they used to dry for winter. Those who lived in the high Alps even froze the spears, for serving in January at the Feast of Epicurus. A recipe for asparagus can be found in the third edition of one of the oldest cookbooks, Apicius’s De re Coquinaria, published in 3BC.

It isn’t just valued as a vegetable. Eaters of asparagus will be familiar with its diuretic powers. But it’s respected for other medicinal properties. It’s described as a prebiotic for its ability to boost good bacteria in the digestive system. It’s also thought that its fibre and flavonoid compounds may ease hangovers and reduce liver damage caused by alcohol. Cooked, its regulatory characteristics are thought to help with ulcerative colitis. Not only that, it’s cited in 15th century Arab sex manual ‘The Perfumed Garden’ as an aphrodisiac. No other than Madame de Pompadour (1721-1764) relished being fed what were called points d'amour.

I agree with her. It’s such a treat, a serving turns me into putty.

It used to be that it was only steamed, boiled or blanched for serving warm with melted butter or cold with vinaigrette. Contemporary recipes offer it baked under sauces, grilled and roasted, raw and pickled. But I still think the original French versions that leave it barely messed with are the best.

However, if your asparagus bed has produced only a handful of spears, here’s a recipe for Asparagus Risotto that makes the most of them.

200g asparagus (about 200g)
800ml vegetable stock
1 tbsp olive oil
60g butter
1 medium shallot, finely chopped
175g Carnaroli or Arborio risotto rice
100ml white wine or vermouth (optional)
30g parmesan, finely grated

Bend the asparagus stalks till the tough ends snap off. Put them into a saucepan with the stock to flavour it. Simmer gently over low heat. Slice the tips off the asparagus and blanch in the stock for 1 minute only. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside. Finely slice the remaining stalks diagonally into rounds.

Heat the oil and half the butter in a heavy saute pan over low heat. Soften the shallot 5 mins, stirring often. Raise the heat to medium. Add the chopped asparagus stalks and toss 2 minutes more. Add the rice and stir continuously for a few minutes until it turns semi-transparent.

Pour in the wine and let it almost evaporate. Reduce the heat to low. Add the stock, a ladleful at a time, stirring between each addition until it is absorbed, about 15 mins, till the rice is only just cooked and retaining a slight bite. If you need more liquid, add boiling water. Stir in the asparagus tips and stock to loosen if needed. The risotto should be soupy, not dry. Remove from the heat and fold in the remaining butter and the parmesan. Season to taste. Serve straight away with more parmesan in a separate bowl.

This column written by Julia Watson originally appeared in the May 2021 edition of The Bugle.

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Truffles

18/4/2021

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I have a confession to make which I probably shouldn’t. I don’t get the point of truffles. It seems to me their texture and flavour is not unlike eating pencil shavings imbued with the scent of unwashed socks.

I’ve been lucky enough to have been generously fed the Dordogne’s black Tuber melanosporum known as the ‘black diamond’ more than once, shaved generously over an omelette of eggs warm from the chicken coop. But with the exception of the renowned Creme Brulee aux Truffes of the Michelin-starred Vieux Logis in Tremolat, the truffle experience doesn’t seem to have rubbed off.

Until I was put in front of a dish of Italian white truffle pasta.

North Italian Tuber magnatum pico from Alba are the world’s rarest and the most expensive of the more than 100 varieties of the tuber. They sell for between €1800 and €4000 for 500g. But with global demand outstripping a supply now reduced to only a few tens of tonnes, they can go at auction for as much as €60,000 per kilo.

In 2017, a set of white Alba truffles weighing just shy of 1kg sold for more than €85,000. That’s only €4000 less than the basic price of a 2018 Mercedes Benz S-Class sedan.

The sad reason for the rocketing prices is that truffles are dying out.

Gnarled fungi believed by Plutarch to result from a combination of lightning, warmth and water in the soil, they are as old in origin as they look. Acknowledgement of their existence goes back as far as 20BC, when they were mentioned in neo-Sumerian inscriptions critiquing the eating habits of their enemy, the Amorites.

In the Dordogne only a century ago, hundreds of tonnes of black truffles were collected each season. These days, the region only manages fewer than ten tonnes, which explains their exorbitant price, despite being a lesser variety than white Italian truffles.

Part of the reason for their savage reduction in number is the changing climate. French truffle growers depend on storms and humidity during August to develop the truffles. But the month has become a series of long dry weeks. As a result, a kilo of fusty-smelling subterranean lumps will fetch, at the cheaper end, around €4,000.

When the mature truffles come up for sale at the Dordogne’s January markets, good tubers weighing roughly 100g apiece can cost as much as €10,000 a kilo.

This is why your Petit Soufflé aux Truffes Noires, or whatever other exotic tuber-scented dish is on offer at your local Michelin-starred restaurant, is so very expensive.

Truffle production in Italy has also been in radical decline, forced by an alteration in land use and the resulting loss of wild habitat and the oak, hornbeam, poplar and willow trees growing on it among whose roots the tubers nestle, waiting for trained dogs and pigs to snout them out.

But in February came news which should delight truffle enthusiasts or aspirants.

France's National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE) has spent the past nine years with a truffle grower, Robin Pépinières, trying to cultivate white truffles in orchards across France in regions with differing climates. At last it reported successful results.

The scheme goes back to the 1970s, when French truffle growers developed techniques that delivered nutrients to encourage fungi to produce vegetative filaments which become truffles. These techniques now account for 90% of French black truffle cultivation.

Applying these to Italian white truffle cultivation, they have just managed for the very first time to harvest white truffles in the Rhône-Alpes, Bourgogne Franche Comté, and Nouvelle Aquitaine.
Black diamonds better watch out. And the rest of us may soon be able to eat white truffles affordably.

Until then, buy a less expensive black truffle from the Dordogne, or a jar of their shavings. Even a small amount of them will go a long way, across several celebratory, transforming, meals. Shave them over an Easter omelette of the best eggs you can buy. Or make this luxurious pasta dish.

Serves 4

150g butter
100ml stock
400g/ fresh tagliatelle
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
30g truffle, shaved

In a pan over low heat, melt the butter in the stock then whisk to amalgamate into a sauce. Set aside.

Bring a pan of salted water to a boil, add the taglietelle and cook for 3-4 minutes till al dente - more chewy than you think right. Drain and toss with the butter and stock and season to taste.

Divide into warmed bowls and shave the truffle over each.

This column written by Julia Watson originally appeared in the April 2021 edition of The Bugle.

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Avocados

18/3/2021

1 Comment

Every effort is made to keep this column local. But it’s March. I defy you to come up with anything cheery to eat in March that you haven’t been eating since November. Animals are more sensible than humans - they recognise there’s little to keep us satisfied until April heralds fresh spring produce, so they may as well sleep.

I’m thinking a disquisition on the avocado might do the spirit-raising trick, since, in Europe, they still come into the ‘treat’ category of food.

The avocado has had an extraordinary rise in popularity, particularly among people young enough to look good wearing yoga clothing or tracksuits. These are the same people who have been responsible in the UK for a rise in visits to A&E departments at hospitals with stab wounds in their palms, the result of being unaware of the trick to removing an avocado’s stone safely. That stone which, incidentally, qualifies the avocado as a berry.

British supermarkets Marks & Spencer and Sainsburys both claim to have been the first to sell the avocado, in the 1960s. But evidence of them being eaten goes back, in Central America, to around 10,000BC. How it has survived so many centuries before man became a farmer is a puzzle. Fruits and vegetables are generally propagated by the animals who eat them excreting their pips and seeds. Have you considered the size of that avocado stone?

At more than 34% of the market, Mexico is still the main provider of the āhuacatl, a Nahuatl word that also means testicle. But it’s also grown further south, across the Caribbean, in California, and more recently in Israel and round the Mediterranean basin.

The first person to give it the name ‘avocado’ was the 17th century physician and naturalist, Hans Sloane, who referenced it in a 1696 index of Jamaican plants. But a Spanish conquistador, Fernández de Oviedo, is said to have been the first European to have actually eaten it. ‘A paste similar to butter,’ he said, ‘and of very good taste.’

While Mexicans ate them with great regularity, California farmers who had planted groves in the 1900s found it hard to popularise an unfamiliar vegetable with an unpronounceable name and reverted to ‘avocado.’ Sales remained modest, with an annual consumption per capita in 1989 of 0.5kg until the California Avocado Commission hired a PR firm in the 1990s to promote them. With the goal of benefitting from TVs top sofa-snack guzzling sports event, the Super Bowl, it came up with the Guacamole Bowl, getting NFL players to share their favourite guacamole recipes, even if they may not have eaten any before Hill & Knowlton encouraged them to do so.

US sales rocketed by almost 70%. Now, every Super Bowl Sunday, more than 45 million kilos of avocados are sold. During the year, Americans eat more than 3kg each. It was Gwyneth Paltrow who repositioned the avocado from couch potato dip to metrosexual breakfast, with her recipe in her 2013 ‘clean eating’ cookbook, ‘It’s All Good’, for avocado on toast - one of her less bonkers developments. In the UK, avocados have had the third largest sales increase of any grocery item.

Here is an excellent recipe for guacamole for any time of year. It comes from Central Mexico and the research of the doyenne of Mexican cuisine, Diana Kennedy.

4 tablespoons finely chopped fresh coriander
1 to 2 serrano chilis, stemmed and finely chopped, depending on how much heat you like
2 tablespoons finely chopped white onion
Sea salt
3 ripe avocados, halved and pitted
285g grape or cherry tomatoes, finely chopped
Tortilla chips, to serve

In a bowl, combine 2 tablespoons of the coriander, the chilies, onion, and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Mash the mix with the bottom of a dry tea cup until a rough paste forms, about one minute.

Scoop the avocado flesh into the bowl and coarsely mash with a potato masher or fork. Stir in the coriander paste and half the tomatoes until combined. Taste and season with salt to taste.

Transfer to a serving bowl and sprinkle with the remaining coriander and tomatoes and serve with nachos or tortilla chips to dip.

This column written by Julia Watson originally appeared in the March 2021 edition of The Bugle.

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