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Nuts

3/2/2020

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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Grapes

3/9/2019

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Summer’s winding down. We’re coming to the end of the more or less lazy time of year, poised once more at the start of the demanding working season that begins with the vendange.

Grapes are coming into their own. Hanging in buxom bunches of purple and green, they weigh down vines on arbours and over garden fences as much as they do along the well tended lines of the region’s vineyards.

Some of these suffered atrociously in early summer from entirely unexpected attacks by extreme weather, grapes crushed under a sudden burst of hail in some vineyards, in others by localised and ferocious windstorms that had no effect on vines under a kilometre away, and which blew themselves out almost as soon as they had begun. Up to 90 percent of grapes were lost in June on several estates in the wider south west region if France.

But winemakers tend to be a philosophical set of people. With or without climate change, putting your faith in nature and hoping it will be on your side when setting out to make wine is one of life's great perils.

Wine-making has been done for centuries. The oldest known winery goes all the way back to 4000 BC, in Armenia, while as many as 8000 years ago, there was an established viticulture culture in neighbouring Georgia.

Grapes are full of all kinds of health-giving multi-syllabic properties in unpronounceable combinations. Most recently popular was resveratrol which some touted as being a life extender, though there isn’t any strong scientific evidence yet to back that claim. Any excuse for a glass.

The so-called ‘French paradox’ - that phenomenon of red-meat eating, red-wine drinking that seems to protect the French from the heart-related diseases bringing down other cultures - probably has less to do with the protective qualities of wine than the sensible manner in which the French eat, that is to say, slowly, at table among friends and family, not on the run or in the car, with better balanced plates of considered components, served in much smaller portions than, say, in America.

Grapes are enormously versatile. They aren’t just for crushing for barrel fermentation or draping by the bunch into the fruit bowl. From them is produced not only jam and jellies and juice, but also vinegar and grapeseed oil. And don’t forget raisins.

Though sweet, grapes have a valuable place in savoury recipes. Their acidity can point up and counterbalance rich dishes cooked in butter or cream. Throw a handful into a gratin of brussels sprouts in a Gruyere cheese sauce then brown it under the grill. Or tone down a sauteed shrimp and rice dish that has been highly and deliciously spiced with a mix of toasted-and-ground cumin seed, fennel seed and Piment d’Espelette. You can roast red grapes and set them on slices of toasted baguette slathered in Bleu d’Auvergne to eat with your evening aperitif in the autumn sunshine. And don’t forget how well they go in a chilled, mayonnaise-dressed, salad of chunks of turkey or chicken breast on endive and watercress leaves under a scattering of toasted almonds.

Here is a dish, easy to put together, that makes an impressive and delicious course at both a formal dinner and a relaxed family supper, depending on the elegant platter or rustic bowl you present it in.

Wine-braised chicken with roasted grapes

Serves 4

4 medium onions, peeled
600g potatoes, peeled
2 large heads of fennel
1.5kg free-range chicken, jointed into 8 pieces
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
3 tablespoons olive oil
½ bunch fresh rosemary, leaves roughly chopped
300ml white wine
200ml chicken stock
1 head of garlic, cut through the middle into 2
1 lemon, scrubbed and thinly sliced
2 handfuls red grapes, preferably seedless
Leaves from a few sprigs of fresh flat-leaf parsley

Preheat oven 190C.

Cut onions into wedges, roughly chop potatoes. Shave fennel bulbs with a potato peeler then cut into six pieces, keeping layers attached to base.

Season chicken. Heat oil in a large saucepan over a medium heat. Working in batches, add chicken and fry until gold all over then remove to a plate. Add more oil if needed.

Reduce heat to medium-low, add onions and fennel and saute gently until soft but not coloured, about 15 minutes. Return chicken to pan, add rosemary, raise heat to medium-high and leave chicken to colour a few minutes.

Pour in wine and bring to boil, then lower heat and reduce by half. Add stock and potatoes. Insert garlic halves between chicken pieces and bring pan gently back to boil.

Transfer all to a roasting tray, slip lemon slices between chicken pieces and vegetables. Roast 30 minutes or until potatoes are tender and chicken cooked through.

After 10 minutes, put the grapes in a small roasting dish, drizzle with a little oil and roast in oven for the last 20 minutes or until caramelised. Fold grapes into chicken. Pick off and roughly chop parsley leaves, scatter over and serve.

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

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Garlic

2/8/2019

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You know you’re in France as soon you set foot in the Paris Metro. It’s not just the idiosyncratic door opener, more suited in design as the lock to a public loo, but the miasma of garlic that hangs in the air. It’s the one vegetable that distinguishes the British nation from the French.

Its flavour brought fear (and frequent loathing) to the hearts of post-war eaters introduced to this member of the allium family with the cookbooks of Elizabeth David in the 1950s. Eating garlic separated the men from the boys (women, in those days, generally being the person assigned to cooking duties and in whose gift, therefore, it was to use the root or not).

It’s curious it took us so long to discover the flavouring. Garlic has been known since the time of the ancient Egyptians. In a rather high-handed tone, ancient Romans described it as “much used for food among the poor.”

Way back in those days, it was also recognised for its medicinal properties. Studies today have confirmed it contains high levels of vitamins and a large number of nutrients from calcium to iron and phosphorus necessary to the functioning of our immune system.

Garlic can reduce colds and the duration of a cold. It’s said to have an impact on reducing blood pressure and in consequence cardiovascular diseases such as stroke and heart attack. There are studies that suggest it can also assist in controlling the development of Alzheimer’s and dementia, though these studies have their sceptics.

Native to central Asia with at least 120 cultivars, garlic grows wild all over the place. Walk through a wood in Scotland in late spring and the scent of garlic fills the air, while the firework sparkles of its white flowers indicate that its best picking time is now past. Its leaves make a good pesto, eliminating the need for the clove of garlic and the basil, the essential base to which are added the pine nuts or walnuts, oil and Pecorino Romano of the original Genoese recipe.

In France, three types of garlic have been awarded protected AOC status. Not just the familiar Ail Rose de Lautrec, the rose pink garlic of the Lautrec region most readily found in markets in spring, but the Ail Blanc de Lomagne from Gascony, and Ail de la Drôme. These are the garlics to be most simply experienced by rubbing a cut clove (leave its peel on for grip) over a thick slice of sourbread toast before drizzling over a glug of good olive oil and a grinding of black pepper. Add diced sunripe tomato and you have bruschetta (pronounced ‘broosketta’, please, never ‘brooshetta’).

Regular garlic is all you need for cooking. And if you come across those large containers of ready-peeled cloves, one way to use them is to confit them. Set them in a small saucepan and cover them with vegetable oil to rise 1 centimetre above them and simmer them over the lowest possible heat until they begin to turn a soft gold. Let them cool and store them in the fridge for adding to roast chicken or other baked dishes, using the flavoured oil to baste, or serve them to hearty (brave?) gourmets in a bowl ,stabbing some of them with toothpicks, to eat with aperitifs. This method produces deliciously squishy, caramelised cloves. Or spread them over a slice of toast.

Garlic is a good ‘elevator’ of food. Its flavour convinces the diner you’ve spend time and effort over your cooking as in this recipe that impresses but which comes together with very little time and effort. It will do its stuff in the oven while you are outside with your aperitif and confited garlic, enjoying the wonderful June weather.

Serves 4

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
A wineglassful of bought mayonnaise
65g grated Comte, Parmesan, or other hard cheese, grated
2-3 tablespoons fine breadcrumbs
1 or 2 finely chopped cloves of peeled garlic to taste
2 tablespoons finely chopped tarragon
A little milk in a dinner plate
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 200C.
Line a baking sheet with buttered greaseproof paper.
In a small bowl, mix together the mayonnaise, garlic, herbs and cheese. Season with salt and black pepper.
Dip each chicken breast in the milk and lay it on the baking sheet.
Spread each chicken breast with the mayonnaise mix and bake for 15-20 minutes.
Remove from oven and sprinkle over the breadcrumbs then return to the oven and bake for a further 15-20 minutes till the juices run clear. If the breadcrumbs haven’t turned gold, set them under a hot grill for a minute or two.

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

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Peas, two recipes

4/7/2019

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I offer you an ode to one of my favourite fruits - the pea. Yes indeed, botanically speaking, the pea does not qualify as a vegetable because it develops from a flower into a pod which contains its seeds.

It was a summer holiday ritual of my childhood that my sister and I were not released to go off on all-day adventures on bicycles until we had picked and podded that day’s dish of peas. Back then, no-one had any idea of or interest in where we had disappeared to or how long we would be gone. We were only instructed to be back in time for supper which, for the peas alone, we would not have missed.

Planted during the wintery part of the year all the way through to early summer - those jewels that emerge in July represent the epitome of summer. Sweet enough to eat raw (try offering a bowl of them with aperitifs. They will disappear faster than crisps), pick or buy them young enough that their tender pods can be eaten too. If you don’t have access to fresh peas, they are about the one unique vegetable that is just as good - some might say even better - cooked from frozen.

Back in the Middle Ages - and the present day north of England, location of the famous mushy peas made from the marrowfat pea variety - peas were grown for drying to eat as a porridge, potage or soup. Records find peas as early as the Neolithic period in the spread of land that is now know as Greece, Turkey, Jordan and Syria. Archaeologists discovered evidence of peas in the Nile delta as far back as 4800 BC, then later in Georgia and even later in Afghanistan. Peas first appeared as a staple in India and modern-day Pakistan as far back as 2250 BC. But it took several centuries for eaters to wake up to the joy of the immature pea eaten fresh.

If you are growing them yourself, or have access to a grower, don’t waste the pods. No good Perigord housewife or cook would. They make a fine soup.

Pea pod soup

Serves 4

1 kg pea pods
1 tablespoon butter
1 shallot, peeled and finely chopped
¾ litre chicken stock or water
Salt to taste
Single cream
Small bunch of chives, finely chopped
Pea shoots (optional)

Top and tail the pods. Melt butter in a pan and sweat shallot. Add pods and boiling stock or water. Boil gently till soft. Puree in a blender using a little of the cooking liquid to loosen, then pass through a sieve and season.

Reheat with remaining chicken stock or water. Ladle into warm bowls, swirl in a little cream, scatter over some chopped chives and a pea shoot.

If you’d like to make a main course of them, this is a delectable recipe pinched from The Guardian that pairs peas with ricotta. The two star ingredients marry well; but whereas you can happily make the previous recipe with any frozen pea, this one needs to have fresh peas for best affect and a good ricotta which unless carefully sourced can be extremely bland in flavour.

Pea, mint and ricotta

Serves 4

A handful of flat-leaf parsley
50g toasted breadcrumbs
250g runner beans (topped and tailed)
Juice of 1 lemon
Extra virgin olive oil
100g fresh peas
A handful of picked mint leaves
A handful of pea shoots
200g ricotta
Salt and black pepper

Firstly make your parsley crumbs. Chop the parsley finely and bash together with the toasted breadcrumbs in a pestle and mortar.
Blanch the runner beans in boiling salted water. Remove while they still have bite, drain well, but reserve the water, then place on a hot griddle or frying pan. Char until marked and blistered.

Place on a plate and squeeze over the lemon juice, a drizzle of olive oil and a pinch of salt and pepper. In the same pan of boiling water, cook your peas and drain.

In a large bowl, combine the mint and pea shoots. Roughly chop the runner beans (save the dressing) then add to the salad with the cooked peas. Blob the ricotta over a large serving plate and assemble your salad over the top, dress with the reserved lemon juice and olive oil. Finish off the salad with an attractive scattering of the parsley crumbs.

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

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Chateau de Rooey

21/6/2019

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These are the months to be jumping in and out of the pool or the river and to enjoy eating in the open air and to welcome the long, slow ending of the day with a p’tit apéro. And here in the Perigord you can enjoy an evening drink that it wholly unique to this part of the world.

It is light, charming and delicious. It is still quite rare. And we can enjoy it thanks in large part to one extraordinary family, Gilles and Laetitia Gérault. It begins over twenty years ago when Gilles, who had graduated from wine school and had been working at the Coite de la Borde vineyard suddenly he had the opportunity to rent some vines at one of the oldest sites for wine in the Bergerac.

The vines were perched on the ridge directly to the north of the town of Bergerac with spectacular views of the river Dordogne and the conurbation below. This was where the monks in the tenth century began growing vines and making wine, required for the eucharist, after the old Roman-era vineyards had been devastated by two centuries of invasions from Arabs in the 8th century and Vikings in the 9th. It was only two hundred years later that the monks moved across the river and began making the wine that has become famous as Monbazillac.

It was called the Chateau de Rooy, after some Dutch or Flemish connected from those 16th and 17th century times when the Huguenots of Bergerac close ties with their fellow Protestants in Britain and the Low Countries. Many later fled there as refugees when King louis XIV revoked the tolerations granted by King Henri IV and began persecuting Protestants.

Gilles was convinced it was good land for wine and at first as he began clearing the scrubland and coaxing the old vines into giving their best, he only made Bergerac Sec, the dry white wine. He had no clients, and depended entirely on sellinging unbottled wine in bulk to négociants, the middlemen and wholesalers who long dominated the wine trade in the Bergerac and the Bordeaux. (Until the 1920s, there was no difference between the two regions; Bergerac wine was routinely sold as Bordeaux.)

Gilles had two strokes of luck. The first was that for his first few years the price of wine in bulk was good and there were no great frosts or hailstorms nor other climate disasters that could have wiped him out. The second was that Laetitia believed in him and in his dream and until 2011 she went out to work in town and they lived on her salary. Every penny Gilles made from wine was ploughed back into the land, buying new vats and bottling equipment, building a new chai to make the wine and slowly planting new vines. Along the way, Laetitia produced three daughters.

Gilles had a further dream, to revive an almost lost appellation called Rosette, a slightly sweet white wine that I find perfect for a summer evening. It goes beautifully with goat’s cheese, foie gras and enjoy some sloshed over my strawberries. I sometimes use it to poach white fish and it makes a terrific partner for Chinese and Japanese food, or with a very dark and bitter chocolate.

Rosette became an appellation in 1946 but there was little demand and less promotion and by the late 1990s when Gilles began there were only five vineyards still making small amounts. Even today, google ‘Rosette’ and you will find it described as a hybrid grape grown in Canada and New York state to make a light red wine or a rosé.

The Rosette of Bergerac deserves better than that. It is made from Sauvignon Blanc or Gris and Semillon grapes and Muscadelle. It is a far more serious wine than the usual cheap vin moelleux wine offered in supermarkets. After two years in his new vineyard Gilles decided to try, mainly because he had a good harvest and some wine left over. He made 5,000 bottles of Rosette and managed to sell the lot.

‘I seldom saw the children as the girls grew up,’ he recalls. ‘I was working all the time, spending every weekend selling my wines at wine shows and markets, and after ten years I was selling 20,000 bottles of Rosette a year. I had begun to earn a living and Laetitia could give up her outside job and come back to work much, much harder with me, doing all the administration.’

His Rosette is 6.60 euros a bottle, cheap at the price for something as good as this that is also just about unique - although other local vineyards are now offering Rosettes. Gilles’s other wines are are also strongly recommended. His Bergerac Sec (which won a silver medal at the Paris Concours last year) and his Bergerac Red are a bargain at 5.10 euros a bottle.

His prestige wines, called Folly de Rooy, are stunning at 12.90 euros. I was not surprised that his Folly white won gold at the Paris Concours, which also this year gave him the Prix d’Excellence for his Pecharmants (He won six golds in the last six years). And the Hachette Guide gives it two stars. In short, he is one of the Bergerac’s finest wine makers, despite his vineyard being devastated by the great frost of 2017.

‘Wine is a good mother,’ he told me, shrugging, before taking me off to admire his marvellous view and show me his new replanting plans. ‘If she fails you one year, she do well by you the next.’

To reach Ch de Rooy, take the Mussidan road north out of Bergerac and after about 3 miles is a turning on the right marked Rosette-Est.

This column originally appeared in the June 2019 edition of The Bugle.

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