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Chocolate biscuits

22/12/2022

When my sister and I were small, my mother regularly baked vanilla and chocolate cookies. They were crumbly yet crisp, like the best of shortbread but much lighter and as buttery. While they were cooking, the house would fill with the warm scent of vanilla and the velvet scent of chocolate.

I didn’t really give them much thought until I opened up one of Nigella Lawson’s cookbooks and found a recipe for them called Granny Boyd's Biscuits. No, they’re not! I objected, they’re not Granny Boyd’s, whoever that is. They’re my mother’s! Besides, her ‘Granny Boyd’ recipe only called for the chocolate variety, whereas my mother would split the dough into two, adding chocolate to one half and vanilla only to the other.

It turns out Granny Boyd is the grandmother of Nigella’s editor. All writers know one must treat an editor with delicacy and respect and accept whatever they say. I’m guessing that this was a biscuit recipe ‘of the day’, possibly even found on the back of a cocoa tin or a flour packet, and could just as easily be called ‘Granny Watson’s biscuits’.

At any time of year, they’re a useful biscuit to have around. They store well without losing their crispness - if you can keep them that long. They're perfect to pass around with a fruit compote both in winter and summer to make it just that bit more special, or to stick into a boule of ice cream. But at Christmas is when they come into their own. They make delicious presents, wrapped in baking parchment and tied with a ribbon if you don’t have a pretty tin to give away. If you are in possession of small children or visiting grandchildren, they’re a perfect recipe to get them to make - quick and easy and leaving a bowl that’s delicious for swiping a finger round to lick off any left-over dough.

Nigella only provides a recipe for the chocolate version. Her editor doesn’t seem familiar with the possibility of making a vanilla variety. The only quibble I have is that Nigella and her editor don’t add enough cocoa powder. They suggest 30 grams. My mother went for more, so I always use 50g. If you’re going to make vanilla-flavoured biscuits as well as chocolate ones, hold back the cocoa powder (reducing the amount to 25 grams) and add it only after you’ve reached the point where you can split the dough in two. Then add the cocoa to one half and a teaspoonful of vanilla extract (not the ubiquitous French supermarket Arôme de Vanille which should be banned for its ersatz flavour) to the other. I would add the vanilla extract anyway to all the dough base including the cocoa version for extra depth of flavour.

She also recommends a secondary baking time of 10-15 minutes, whereas I go for 20 minutes. Oven temperatures do vary, so check at 15 minutes that the biscuits feel crisp to the touch. If still spongey, keep them in a further 5. They will firm up as they cool.

The amount the dough makes means you’ll need to bake them in two batches, unless you own two baking sheets.

To make 30-35 biscuits

300g self-raising flour
50g cocoa powder and/or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (my addition)
250g unsalted butter (room temperature)
125g caster sugar

Preheat the oven to 190°C. Sift together the flour and cocoa powder into a mixing bowl and set aside.

Cream together the butter and sugar until light and pale in colour (you can use a wooden spoon but it’s easier and quicker with an electric hand whisk).

Mix in the sifted flour and cocoa – the mixture might look as if it needs liquid to bring it together, but it really doesn’t. Keep working in the ingredients and it will form a dough.

Damp your hands and spoon walnut-sized balls of dough into them. Roll the dough between your palms and, spacing them well apart because they will spread, arrange them on the baking sheets. Gently flatten each ball a little to mark it with the tines of a fork.

Bake the biscuits in the preheated oven for 5 minutes, then turn the temperature down to 170°C for a further 15-20 minutes. The biscuits should feel firm on top but not hard.

Remove from the oven and transfer to cool completely on a wire rack, before storing in an airtight container.

This column written by Julia Watson originally appeared in the December 2022 edition of The Bugle.

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Garlic

22/11/2022

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If my laptop were not a machine but a toga-wearing scribe to be dictated to, it would probably faint. Last night, with a glass of robust red wine to hand, I ate several cloves too many of confit-ted garlic.

The cloves had been simmered in oil over the lowest possible heat in a small saucepan until the palest gold, then jar-stored in their oil in the fridge. I smeared some onto a toasted slice of sourdough, here and there dopping on top (this verb I made up has wide cooking applications) a soft teaspoonful of goat’s cheese mashed with a little crème fraiche and flakes of chilli pepper.

In the south of France and Southern Europe,some types of garlic have protected status. But this member of the allium family actually originated in Central Asia and Iran. 76 percent of global supply sold through supermarkets comes, at 23 million tonnes, from China, with India trailing far behind at just under 3 million.

Now is the time to grow it yourself. In fact, most of the year is the time to grow it yourself - indoors, in a flowerpot. September is about the last time you can grow it outdoors. You do not need green fingers. You only need to buy a good healthy bulb. Separate the cloves and bury them, pointy end up, about 2.5cm deep, and wait for the green germ to emerge as a stalk. (You can eat that, too, finely chopped and sprinkled over fish, chicken or in an omelette.)

It’s worth making an effort for garlic. With winter on its way, it’s almost the perfect health food, used medicinally for 3000 years. Studies in different countries have found it effective in lowering cholesterol, reducing blood pressure, and as a natural anticoagulant helping prevent blood clots associated with peripheral arterial occlusive disease. It is also thought to have the power to stimulate white blood cells and other immune cells, with an ability to fight bacterial infections. Garlic extract injected into mice with Candida showed some success in tackling that fungal infection. Garlic may even have an application in battling cancer.

The Ancient Egyptians would have doubted none of these claims. The Ebers Papyrus, the Egyptian medical text from around 1550 BC, records applying it externally to tumours. Hippocrates advocated its use for internal medicine. In exceptionally rare cases, people claim to be allergic to it, although they may be engaged in a sultry affair. When garlic compounds are absorbed into the bloodstream, not only will they emerge through the lungs and affect the breath but also seep out through the pores, neither activity conducive to seduction.

Set aside any prejudice that garlic is no more than an utter stinker. Elizabeth David, the cookery writer who taught the British that eating could be pleasurable, contended that if you swallowed an unpeeled clove whole (an experience I can confirm is akin to gulping down a horse tablet), anything flavoured with garlic that followed wouldn’t cause you to exude powerful fumes. The friends who assured me that this works may just be thoughtfully polite.

Perhaps more reliable is to cook garlic slowly following a blanching in a couple of changes of water, which reduces its anti-social aspect. When using it in cooking, its flavour can often disappear completely if added too soon. Generally, recipes advise its introduction at the very beginning so that it offers no more than a back note. They instruct melting it gently in butter or oil, being careful not to let it turn bitter with burning. But in some recipes - a tomato sauce, say, where you might want a more pronounced flavour - hold some back and add it five minutes before the end of cooking, then the garlic will come through. To get rid of the smell on your fingers after chopping a clove, rub them under running water around any small stainless steel kitchen utensil.

This is a very mild garlic puree that with the addition of 250ml thick cream stretches into a sauce. It goes wonderfully with chicken, steak or fish. Add even more stock and you have an informal garlic soup to which you could add cubes of winter vegetables to poach in the liquid.

28 garlic cloves, peeled
600ml light chicken or vegetable stock
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon redcurrant jelly
110g butter, melted
juice of ½ lemon
salt and pepper

Bring the garlic cloves to a boil in enough cold water to cover. Reduce heat and poach for 2 minutes. Drain and repeat the process.

Cook the garlic in chicken stock till soft but not mushy, about 8-10 minutes. Drain and set aside and reduce stock by half in a rolling boil.

Put the garlic and 140ml stock into a blender with remaining ingredients and whizz to a paste.

Serve warm as a sauce.

This column written by Julia Watson originally appeared in the November 2022 edition of The Bugle.

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White truffles

22/9/2022

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Citizens of the Périgord are justly proud of their truffles, known informally as black diamonds. Woe betide anyone who might suggest that the white truffles of the north Italian town of Alba are superior. However, if you go by the prices those fetch, it’s hard to dispute which type of truffle is the more revered.

In a good year, the average cost per kilo of the Périgord’s black Melanosporum weighs in at $721.25, while the Tuber magnatum, the so-called truffle of the white Madonna, is so rare that in good condition they can fetch up to $10,500 a kilo. At last year’s late autumn festival, they were selling for $6000 a kilo following a poor harvest. Even in a prolific year, their lowest average price is more than $2000 a kilo.

In 2016, in Philadelphia, a truffle auction took place over global live simulcast at which a white truffle selling in Italy and weighing in at over 1.15 kilos, was the star. The winning bid came from Dong Xhenxiang, chef-owner of Da Dong Roast Duck in Beijing. He paid $112,000 for it. Given an Alba white truffle has a shelf-life of about 7 days, he would have had to use it fast.

The largest truffle in the world was also from Alba and weighed in at 1.88kg. It, too, was sold at auction, by Sotheby’s in New York, for $61,000.

But French truffle growers can now take heart. Big bucks may soon be coming their way. In July, scientists from INRAE, France’s National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment, revealed that somewhere secret in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, 26 white truffles have been successfully cultivated.

Over 90 percent of the Périgord’s black truffles are cultivated. But producers have struggled to farm the rarer white. At the institute, two hard years passed with feeble harvests before this bumper crop. The lead mycologist of the project, Dr Claude Murat, confirmed that the truffles could now be considered as established. In cultivating black truffles, producers expect only a few truffles to begin with before a quick increase by the second or third harvest. Apparently, the French white truffle has just behaved the same way.

Back in the 1970s, French scientists worked out how to successfully inoculate oak trees with truffles, establishing the Périgord as prime providers of the black variety. But the trick failed with the more lucrative white truffles despite working on half a million seedlings in plantations in France, Italy and Spain. After nearly 20 years, only a few truffles were found.

It’s been a long journey to achieve this harvest in France of 26. It was begun in 1999 with oak trees that had been genetically linked with Italian white truffles whose seedlings were then planted out from 2008 on.

Of the 52 oaks planted in 2015, 12 have produced truffles - three truffles in 2019, four in 2020 and suddenly in 2021 the twenty six which together weighed around 900g.

So we may be seeing white truffles at the Sainte Alvere truffle market sometime in the future, which will be of increased financial benefit to local producers and an added filip for local chefs, cooks, and diners.

If you are lucky enough to own a truffle of any colour, treat it as simply as possible. Either grate it generously over a dish of fresh pasta cooked al dente, or shave it over an omelette. Black Perigord truffles can be cooked but white Italian truffles should be eaten raw.

Truffle omelette

2 room-temperature eggs per person
6 fine slices of truffle
Walnut-sized lump of unsalted butter
1 tablespoon oil, light olive or truffle
Finishing salt

An omelette should not contain fewer than two eggs or more than four. If you’re making them for more than one person, you’ll need to repeat the process. Whip them together with a teaspoon of cold water. Add whatever scraps and tailings of truffle you have. Put a nugget of unsalted butter into a heavy-bottomed frying pan over medium-low heat to melt then add a tablespoon of light olive oil or truffle oil and swirl. Pour in the eggs and swirl to cover the pan.

As they begin to set, keep drawing them to the side with a spatula, tilting the pan to let the runny egg fill the bottom. Once they have just set, remove from the heat, shake the pan to ensure the base is not sticking, season with salt and pepper, then add the first three slices of truffle. Fold the omelette in two then add three more slices on top before serving, sprinkled lightly with a finishing salt. Don’t add salt to eggs before cooking them as it toughens them.

This column written by Julia Watson originally appeared in the September 2022 edition of The Bugle.

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St Emilion au chocolat

22/8/2022

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High summer, and the weight of the heat bears down on the weight of the heat in the kitchen - and the duty of the continuous provision of meals for hungry holiday-making guests and family. Oh, for a break! To dip in the pool and river without a care for what will be put on the table at lunch or at supper.

What we need at this time of year is food that is quick to prepare. Of course, the markets are filled with easy solutions: plump tomatoes ready to burst their juicy seams, crisp salad leaves, endless piles of strawberries that only cry out for a dribble of cream or a sprinkle of sugar. It’s not hard to put together a mouthwatering plate of vegetables, a roast chicken, a grilled fish. But at the back of the mind is a thought that says, What can we have that is even more celebratory but easy to make so I can retire to somewhere cool with a book for the afternoon yet impress the table?

Let me propose the St Emilion au chocolat. It’s a cross between a Petit Pot de Chocolat and a chocolate mousse and a blast from the past, first introduced to the British by Elizabeth David’s seminal 1950s cookbook, French Country Cooking. This was the book that taught so many post-war British wives how to cook at a time when olive oil’s only source was the chemist, where it was sold as a cure for earache, and those who had not travelled abroad had never met an aubergine, an artichoke, and so much more.

A different view of the St Emilion’s origins has it that it was George Perry-Smith, whose restaurant, The Hole in the Wall in Bath, launched a culinary revolution in the 1950s. It’s said he discovered a recipe for it on a box of matches while travelling around France. He brought the recipe back and put it straight on his menu. Lovely image. I suspect it’s more likely, however, that Elizabeth David’s publishers sent him an advance copy for a quote or review. Variations have since been developed by other chefs, some of whom add a dash of coffee.

You probably already know the importance of using a chocolate with a high cocoa butter content but you may not know why. Not so long ago, most bittersweet and semisweet chocolates available to home cooks contained less than 60 percent cacao, and recipes were developed accordingly. Now that supermarkets sell bars with a wide range from 50 percent to over 70 percent cacao, recipes have altered to specify what should be used for what. The higher the cacao percentage, the lower the chocolate’s sugar content. Get the percentage wrong and your cake, for example, might become dry and crumbly and taste bitter, or your chocolate sauces split and curdle, so it’s important to use what you’re told.

On the plus side, as well as tasting more intensely chocolate-y, 70 percent dark chocolate contains higher antioxidants, fibre, potassium, calcium, copper, and magnesium, so feel free to consider it a health food and have a cube a day, as some in the medical profession recommend.

Because it’s so rich, this recipe will serve around 8

200g 70% dark chocolate
225ml milk
100g butter
100g caster sugar
1 large egg yolk
150g almond macaroons or ratafia biscuits
Brandy

Break the chocolate into pieces and let it melt in the milk in a small pan over a moderate heat. You must absolutely not let it come to the boil. Once melted, stir it to allow it to become thick and custardy.

With an electric beater, whizz up the butter and sugar in a basin till light and fluffy. Beat in the egg yolk. Mix in the chocolate custard. Lightly crumble up the macaroons (but not to a powder) and put half of them in the bottom of a china or glass dish. Sprinkle them with enough brandy to dampen them. Pour over half the chocolate custard. Distribute the rest of the crumbled macaroons, a little more brandy, then the rest of the chocolate. Leave to set overnight in the fridge.

If you want a lighter, more moussey-y version, use 4 eggs, separated. Add the yolks to the chocolate custard then whip the whites to soft peaks. Fold them into the chocolate mixture with a metal spoon, then continue with the recipe.

This column written by Julia Watson originally appeared in the August 2022 edition of The Bugle.

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Mussels

22/7/2022

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One of the outcomes of Russia’s war against Ukraine is not just the impact on global food stocks of Ukrainian exports of grain and sunflower seeds, stalled by Russia’s blockade of Ukraine’s seaports but the rising cost of white fish. Were you aware that Russia is responsible for the provision of 45 percent of the world's whitefish supply, largely pollack (lieu jaune), cod (cabillaud) and haddock (églefin), all fished in the Barents Sea?

Not just a shortage of sunflower oil is pushing the price of fish-and-chips to extraordinary heights. High-end chefs are taking specialities like scallops off their menus. They are no longer saleable at a price that reflects their now hugely elevated cost. In London, one Michelin-starred chef’s signature scallop dish that had been £19/€22 would now have to be costed at an impossible £30/€35. So it’s no longer on the menu.

France is fortunate that its own fishing grounds are so close and so abundant with interesting varieties there is less need to buy white fish. Fishes appear on the fishmonger’s slabs of ice that may be utterly unfamiliar. But there is no-one more willing to tell you what to do with them than the person behind you in the queue.

The British have always been conservative in their fish choice, unaware that half the species they spurn (like the gurnard common in British waters highly prized in Marseille as essential to bouillabaisse) are warmly welcomed in Europe.

There were fifty-two species of edible fish listed in the 1970s by what is now Britain’s Sea Fish Industry Authority. That’s not counting shellfish or freshwater fish, nor fish imported for specific ethnic markets, and the Brits still don’t eat nearly enough of them. Maybe it’s a left-over from the days when it was felt men required a good steak or chunk of red meat as a main course.

Those days and attitudes are long gone, and we understand how important it is for climate change to reduce our appetite for red meat. Over the course of one summer, I counted over twenty-five different kinds of fish in our Perigord markets. But if you still feel a little anxious about venturing into unfamiliar cooking territory, try this dish, which makes a change from the familiar Moules Marinière, and has the advantage that most of it can be prepared in advance.

Gratin de moules

Serves 4-6

2 kg mussels
3 tablespoons olive oil
4 shallots, peeled and finely chopped
350ml dry white wine
350g butter, softened
3-6 garlic cloves, depending on enthusiasm, peeled and grated
Zest of 1 lemon and 2 tablespoons juice
4 rounded tablespoons finely chopped parsley
100g fresh breadcrumbs
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Tip the mussels into a sinkful of cold water. Scrub each one, pulling off their beards. Discard any broken mussels. Tap any open mussels with a knife. If they don't immediately shut tight, discard them. Once cleaned, tumble the mussels through fresh cold water to eliminate any remaining sand.

Heat the oil in a large pan, add the shallots, stir, and cook over a low heat for 5 minutes or until soft. Add the wine and raise the heat to medium. As soon as it comes to the boil, tip in the mussels and cover with a lid. Cook the mussels for about 5 minutes to open them, shaking the pan frequently. Remove the lid and lift out the mussels with a slotted spoon. Discard any that are still closed. Reserve the cooking liquid and strain into a bowl through a sieve lined with muslin or doubled kitchen towel, discarding the shallots. Rinse out the pan, then return the liquid to it. Boil the liquid over a high heat down to about 2 tablespoons.

Remove and discard the top shell of each cooked mussel. Arrange the bottoms close together in a roasting pan.

Mash the butter, garlic, lemon zest and juice, chopped parsley and breadcrumbs together with the mussel cooking liquid. This is a great deal easier if you do it by squeezing everything together with your clean hands. Season, and press a blob of the mixture onto each mussel.

Preheat your grill to its hottest. Place the roasting pan under it until the butter is bubbling and the breadcrumbs lightly browned. Serve immediately with plenty of crusty baguette to dip into the juices - and a pile of paper napkins.

The dish can be prepared ahead and stored in the fridge up to the point where you dab the garlic butter mixture onto each mussel. (Keep that mixture on the counter to stay soft. Adding it to the mussels before refrigerating them will make the fridge reek of garlic.)

This column written by Julia Watson originally appeared in the July 2022 edition of The Bugle.

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Fruit fools

22/6/2022

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June is the month when fruits and berries tumble onto summer stalls, scenting the air of farmers market streets. Nostrils flaring, we abandon the thought of the pies and crumbles we made during winter which worked to disguise the poor quality or tedium of the only fruit available then for us to eat. We’re now well into the season where we should stop meddling with fruit and allow it to shine on its own or at most sprinkle it with sugar and maybe dribble it with cream. But if you do want to tizzy it up a bit, or improve a fruit such as apricots which may not be quite ripe, or stretch the fruit to feed more people, a good fool is the way to go.

A ‘foole’ is undoubtedly an English, not a French, tradition. The pudding is first mentioned in 1598. But there is a suggestion that the gooseberry fool - the classic fool flavour - may go back to the 15th century.

Sadly, gooseberries seem to have fallen out of fashion in our supermarkets. If you want them, you pretty much have to grow your own or haunt high end fruiterers for their limited supplies. Instead, raspberries (but not strawberries), rhubarb, blackberries, blackcurrants, apricots, even apples, have all been associated with fools. Pruneaux d’Agen that have been macerated for weeks in Armagnac (or cheap port) make a marvellous fool. Mango fool is almost a staple in India. If you want to make it, and why not, it works better with tinned Alphonso mangoes than with fresh ones.

Although the 1598 mention of the ‘foole’ talks of it being made with ‘clouted cream’, traditionally a fool was a puree of stewed fruit folded into a rich egg custard. These days, we have reverted to whipped cream, sometimes flavouring it with rose water, orange water, cinnamon or nutmeg, depending on which fruit is used.

No-one quite knows where the name ‘fool’ came from. The Oxford English Dictionary firmly rejects the suggestion it comes from the French verb ‘fouler’, to crush or press. Its argument is that it bears no relation to the early use of the word. But it doesn’t come up with an alternative.

Robert May, born in 1588 into a family of cooks in Buckinghamshire, was a cook from the age of ten to the English Roman Catholic aristocracy of the day. In 1660, he published the enormous and wide-ranging The Accomplisht Cook, the first cookbook to group recipes into sections, twenty-four of them. It was one of the few cookery books published during the Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell and went big on recipes for two new American food imports to Europe, the potato and the turkey. His recipe for fool is unusual. He calls it the Norfolk Fool. It’s an odd recipe, mostly focused on a manchet, a small flat loaf of bread which he slices and covers in a thick boiled cream and egg custard with the fruit almost an afterthought. It’s more like a bread-and-butter pudding than a fool.

If you have children in need of entertainment, a fruit fool is a good way to start them on cooking. It’s a very quick and easy recipe to make and produces a delicious bowl for them to lick clean.

To serve 4, use 450g of any fruit to 400ml of double/thick cream, or, for a lighter version, 300ml of cream with 100ml strained Greek yogurt, and 4-5 tablespoons of sugar or more to taste.

Put your fruit in a medium pan with four tablespoons of sugar. Set the pan on a medium-low heat and cover. Cook until the fruit is soft. If it is surrounded by juice, take off the lid, turn up the heat slightly and leave it to bubble away until some of the juice has evaporated and the puree has thickened. Taste the cooked fruit and add more sugar if necessary. Lightly mash with a fork or, for a smoother finish, place a sieve over a bowl and press the fruit through it.

Pour the cream into a large bowl and whisk it into soft, floppy peaks. Lightly fold the cooled fruit into the cream for a rippled effect or more completely if you prefer a fully integrated fool. But take care not to deflate it with a forceful action that knocks the air out of the cream.

Serve with langues de chat or some other delicate biscuit.

This column written by Julia Watson originally appeared in the June 2022 edition of The Bugle.

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Potatoes

22/5/2022

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The poor benighted potato has generally been treated dismissively as a cheap stomach filler, or a backgrounder to the main event of meat or fish. Yet it’s a vegetable with a remarkably sophisticated history.

It’s believed cultivation of the tuber may have begun 10,000 years ago in South America. However, because potatoes don’t preserve well, physical evidence hasn’t been found that far back, only artistic references on pottery remains so this is conjecture. The earliest actual remains date to 2500 BC, at Ancón in Peru. That’s where the potato’s domestication is thought to have begun, as well as in Bolivia, between 8000 and 5000 BC.

This is the time of year to eat them as the delicacies the new season’s potatoes surely are. There is hardly a better treat than the tiny Jersey Royals coming in now, or the new Rattes or other fingerlings, boiled or steamed and eaten just with a thick slice of a good brand of cold butter melting over them like a climate-crisis icecap and a generous grinding of black pepper, with a spring salad on the side. In the winter, is there anything more comforting than a baked potato with a crisp skin, its interior fluffed up with an excess of butter? Present it the American way with fried bacon bits, chopped onion and sour cream instead of butter and you have a meal for the angels.

Evidence of the potato’s first formal arrival in Europe is a receipt dated 28 November 1567 for delivery between the Canary Islands’ Las Palmas and Antwerp. The second piece of evidence - to the British Isles - is between 1588 and 1593, the entry of these potatoes more casual, in the baggage of sailors along with plundered silver and other precious souvenirs. Readily stored, they became useful nourishment on long voyages, which was probably the reason why they were regarded with some scorn as a food for poor people. It was fishermen from the Basque country in Spain with their supply of potatoes for their voyages across the Atlantic in the 16th century, who introduced the tuber to western Ireland where they dropped anchor to dry their cod.

By the end of the 16th century, it was growing widely in Northern France. In his 1774 “Examen chymique des pommes de terres” ("Chemical examination of potatoes"), French physician Antoine Parmentier, who gave his name to the most delicious thick potato soup, demonstrated the potato’s huge nutritious value. King Louis XVI and his court fell for the new vegetable and promoted it enthusiastically, with Queen Marie Antoinette wearing a headdress of potato flowers at a fancy dress ball. By 1815, France’s annual potato crop soared to 21 million hectolitres (1 hectolitre = 100 litres) then in 1840 to 117 million.

They spread at speed across Europe. With the explosion in 1845 of the population in Ireland, the planting of potatoes took up one-third of the land. They became a popular replacement there for their previous cheap stomach fillers, turnip and rutabaga, as they did among the poor across Europe. Other advantages of potatoes was their nutritional value and lower rate of spoilage.

There are almost as many varieties of potato as there are pulses in the legumes and pulses family, with different types pitched at different jobs. With any luck, May will launch the start of the eating outdoors season with barbecues being rolled out when if it is still a little chilly, people can gather around the flaming stove. Indoors or out, this recipe makes the most of the humble potato salad.

800g new potatoes, scrubbed but not peeled
2 teaspoons wholegrain mustard
2 tablespoons muscatel or white wine vinegar
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 shallot, very finely chopped
3 tablespoons mayonnaise
2 tablespoons soured cream
1 tablespoon horseradish sauce
Juice of ¼ lemon
2 spring onions, finely sliced on the diagonal
6 rashers of bacon, fried till crisp, drained on paper then crumbled (optional)

Boil the potatoes into a large pan of cold salted water and simmer until tender, about 10 minutes.

Whisk the mustard, vinegar, olive oil and chopped shallot together with a good pinch of salt and a grind of pepper. When the potatoes are cool enough to handle, peel if you wish, then halve, quarter or cut them into bite-sized chunks if large. Toss thoroughly in the mustard dressing until completely coated. Leave to cool completely.

Mix together the mayonnaise, soured cream, lemon juice and horseradish. Once the potatoes are cool, toss them thoroughly in the mayonnaise mixture along with the spring onions.

This column written by Julia Watson originally appeared in the May 2022 edition of The Bugle.

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Sorrel

22/4/2022

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Sorrel is a vegetable that is thoroughly worth growing yet few people do. Given how popular is its use in sauces in France this is a pity, since it’s not all that easy to find in supermarkets or farmers’ markets. It reappears in the ground without fail every year from April to September, in a clump that increases annually. It doesn’t mind being grown in poor soil and is perfectly happy being raised in a large flower pot.

We’re talking about common sorrel here, Rumex acetosa, not to be confused with ‘sorrel of the Caribbean’, Hibiscus sabdariffa, whose name will immediately bring to mind that gorgeous red flower used to make sour tea, juice, jams and jellies.

Although cultivated as a leaf vegetable or herb, French sorrel (oseil) can be foraged for in the wild in common grassland. But it’s probably best to leave it in place if the field is used by animals and pets. Its leaves look similar to dock, which gives it its other English names: narrow-leaved dock, spinach dock, arctic dock, patience dock, sheep sorrel, and broad-leaved and red-veined sorrel.

While the leaves are best picked young, if they have matured the green need only to be stripped off the fibrous stem which is then discarded. Baby leaves or torn larger leaves can be added raw to a salad for a lemony kick. It’s that lemon taste which makes it so attractive for flavouring rich cream or butter sauces to go with fish or chicken or egg dishes. If you add actual lemon juice to such a sauce, it’s likely to curdle the cream. When using sorrel, however, if you’ve made sure you’ve first heated the cream in a separate pan before incorporating the sorrel, there’s less possibility of curdling the cream and the sorrel will add that lemon tartness without the danger.

Sadly, its lovely forest green becomes a grungy shade of khaki as soon as the leaves are exposed to the hot melted butter, or cream, or boiling stock that is part of the recipes. But the flavour compensates for the loss of colour.

It’s a nutritious plant, high in fibre, magnesium, vitamins C and A, antioxidants, and other micronutrients. However, if you’re allergic to rhubarb, buckwheat or knotweed, don’t eat it. Sorrel is part of the same family.

Like spinach, what looks like a generous bunch will wilt down to a miniscule amount, so buy or pick much more than you believe is necessary. Fresh sorrel sauce needs to be used at once as it won’t keep well. But since you can freeze it, it’s worth making a large amount of it to divide into small portions you can bring out when you don’t have time to tizzy up a piece of fish or a breast of chicken with other culinary tricks.

What you mustn’t do is cook it in any copper or copper alloy pan. As with spinach, the acid sorrel contains doesn’t just cause the metal to leach into the food but it also erodes the pan’s tin or stainless steel surface lining.

To alter the flavour of a Potage Bonne Femme leek-and-potato soup, once those vegetables have softened, add a generous handful or more of finely sliced shreds of sorrel leaf and stir them in until they have broken down.

A sorrel sauce makes a particularly good companion to a fillet of salmon. Just steam a thick slice until still slightly rosy in the middle (you don’t want that sawdust texture of a conference catering salmon) and lay it on a puddle of the sauce.

155ml cream
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
115g sorrel leaves, stems removed
2 tablespoons vermouth, or chicken or vegetable stock
salt and white pepper to taste

1. Pile a few sorrel leaves on top of one another and roll them up like a cigar. Slice them across in thin strips.
2. Bring the cream to a simmer in a small pan.
3. In a separate pan, heat the butter over medium heat. Add the sorrel and wilt it, stirring often, until it collapses.
4. Stir in the cream and bring to a low simmer.
5. Add the vermouth and stock to thin it out to the consistency you want. Season with salt and white, not black, pepper.

This column written by Julia Watson originally appeared in the April 2022 edition of The Bugle.

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Brussels sprouts

23/12/2021

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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

1 Comment

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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