Blog Posts

Spelt

18/2/2021

It’s odd that we assign the celebration of love to St Valentine’s Day given that, on two separate years in 3rd century AD, Emperor Claudius II used February 14th to execute two men. An aversion to their names, perhaps? Both were called Valentine.

Why or when the Roman Catholic Church elected to honour them isn’t clear. The day fell in the middle of the feast of Lupercalia, during which Romans sacrificed a goat and a dog. They then whipped off their clothes and subsequently went about whipping women - with strips of the animals’ skins. Apparently the women lined up for this honour, believing it would make them fertile.

There was also a matchmaking lottery, with their names dropped into a receptacle for the men to draw one out. The lucky women would be paired up with them for a romp to last at least the duration of the three-day festival and for life if they had found a suitable match.

I don’t feel any of this is anything to be celebrated with chocolate.

I am going for the other and entirely opposite February event. The word February comes from ‘februum’, meaning purification, and ‘februa’, the descriptive for the various cleansing rites and instruments put into play to prepare for the coming of Spring.

Throughout the month, spelt and salt were used to clean houses. On the festival of the Lupercalia, February 15th, priests donned leaves and strips of goat skin. Thus dressed, they would streak around the sacred boundary of Rome, in this ‘februum’ version to purify the city. They too, in a playful fashion, would whip young maidens with goat hide strips along the way.

Decide for yourselves how playful an event this must have been while I deal with spelt.

Greek mythology has it that spelt was a gift from Demeter, the goddess of agriculture and at one and the same time the sister and the consort of the god of gods, Zeus. (It is amazing what behaviour the ancients considered normal.)

I have a soft spot for spelt because it’s also called dinkel wheat, which is rather charming. It’s one of the most ancient cereals, with evidence of its cultivation north east of the Black Sea going back as far as 5000BC. By 500BC, it was a common crop in southern Britain.

Recently, it has been enjoying a revival, being a cheap staple food filled with nutrients and often used in posh breads and pasta as a substitute for wheat. It’s thrumming with vitamins, nutrients and minerals.

But despite its dubious background, February is the month of romance, so probably none of this information is uplifting you. Therefore I capitulate and offer you a bundt cake for Valentine’s - or any other - Day, based on spelt but containing chocolate, though only in cocoa powder form. So you might consider drizzling some melted 70% chocolate over all instead of the icing sugar.

3 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
¾ tsp hazelnut extract
250g/8ozs caster sugar
250 ml sunflower oil
250g/8ozs white spelt flour
125g/4ozs spelt wholemeal
1 ½ tsp baking powder
2 tbls good quality cocoa powder
2 tbls plain yoghurt

Preheat oven to 180C

Butter and flour a 23cm diameter, 2 litre Bundt pan.

Beat eggs, vanilla and hazelnut extract and sugar in electric mixer until tripled in volume – 4-5 minutes. Add oil slowly in a steady stream with a few pauses until it is all incorporated. The batter will be fairly thick.

Sift flours, baking powder into a large bowl. Mix thoroughly with a hand whisk. Fold into batter with a large whisk or wooden spoon.

Divide the mixture in half into another bowl. To this bowl, add the cocoa powder and the yoghurt, and fold together.

Using a tablespoon, spoon 3 tablespoons of the cocoa batter to form a triangle in the Bundt tin. Between these spoon in the plain batter. Using a knife of dessertspoon, swirl the two batters together. Repeat the process on top of this using all of both batters, and swirl again. Put in pre-heated oven on middle shelf and cook for 35 – 40 minutes. Check with a wooden skewer and if still moist, bake an extra 5 minutes maximum, but no longer to avoid drying out.

Wait 10 minutes before turning cake out onto cooling rack. Let it cool thoroughly.

When cold, dust with icing sugar.

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

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Onion soup

18/1/2021

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If there’s any single ingredient it would be a challenge to produce a well-flavoured dish without, it’s the onion. I can vouch for this first hand. In the years I lived in Moscow, the onion would disappear in October, to reappear as a new crop only in May. Almost six months without them! Until November, sometimes random piles of onions would show in the markets. But pick any of them up and it would subside into an evil-smelling slump between the fingers, only restrained by their skins from oozing into your palm.

Not for nothing are they the third vital element in the holy trinity of carrot and celery in a mirepoix or sofrito. They are key to the flavour foundation of every dish to which they are assigned. To test, look through your cookbooks and see if you can find any recipes (aside from those for puddings and pastries) in any cuisine that doesn’t call for an onion, or one or more of the most common of its close relations, the shallot, leek, garlic bulb, spring onion or chive.

Each of them is part of the Allium family, one of the oldest species of vegetable. Iran, Central Asian nations and India all claim to have been the first to cultivate it, over 7000 years ago, and traces have been found in Bronze Age settlements in China. It turned out the Plymouth Brethren needn’t shipped it to America - Native Americans were already growing it.

Every year, at Village Fetes across Britain, smallholders vie to win the red rosette for the largest onion. So far, the record goes to Tony Glover, whose entry to the Harrogate Autumn Flower Show in 2014 weighed 8.5kg. Perfect for a witches’ cauldron of onion soup.

And onion soup is the ideal soup for this chilly, damp and dour time of year. Its cooking infuses the entire house with an, at first, unwashed stink but one that quickly mellows into a warm, caramel-ly smell, full of comforting promise. Slow, low-heated cooking in butter encourages the onion to collapse and its sugars to develop. It’s only an olfactory challenge up to the point it reaches this stage, from that painful exposure that makes your eyes sting (which can be slightly mitigated by holding them under water as you peel their skins), to chopping them - with your head held as far back as you can to evade their fumes. Nigel Slater has a recipe that avoids this agony by roasting the onions until collapsed, then chopping them and boiling them, first in wine then in stock, to create the soup.

I prefer the Paris bistro method, made a day or two ahead and reheated so that the flavours become even more mellow.

Serves 4 or 6

5 tablespoons unsalted butter, 2 tablespoons of it cubed and chilled
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1.5kg onions, halved lengthwise, peeled, and thinly sliced
1 teaspoon salt
freshly ground black pepper
½ tablespoon granulated sugar
350ml dry white wine
1.5 litres beef stock
10 sprigs fresh thyme, tied together
2 bay leaves
1 baguette
1 large garlic clove, unpeeled and cut in half crosswise
2 tablespoons Cognac
150g Gruyère, grated

In a large pot, melt 3 tablespoons butter over medium heat. Add the oil and onions. Saute the onions until soft, stirring occasionally, 15-20 minutes then add the salt, pepper and sugar and continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions are caramelised to a deep golden brown. If the onions begin to catch and brown too fast, reduce the heat. Continue to cook, stirring occasionally, 35 to 45 minutes more.

Add the wine and raise the heat to high. Cook until almost all liquid has evaporated, 8 to 10 minutes, stirring frequently. Add the stock and the herbs to the pot. Bring slowly to a boil, reduce to a simmer then cook, uncovered until the soup has thickened a little, 20 to 30 minutes.

Remove from the heat and whisk in the remaining cubes of butter. Add salt and freshly ground pepper to taste.

Heat the grill. Slice the baguette into two slices per person. Toast them until gold on each side. Rub one side of each toast with the garlic clove and set aside.

Put warmed heatproof bowls into a roasting pan, add half a tablespoon of brandy to the bottom of each, and ladle soup on top. Top each serving of soup with two garlic-rubbed toasts. Divide cheese among the servings, covering the bread and soup surface. Slide the pan under the grill until the cheese is melted and bubbling, 4 to 8 minutes. Alternatively, and if you have diners who don’t like soggy toast, top each garlic-rubbed toast with some cheese and grill them separately, for passing separately from the soup.

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

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Quince

18/12/2020

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Given the dispiriting status of Christmas this year, it feels unseemly to provide a jolly discourse on preparing jubilant food to celebrate the coming together of loved ones, perhaps not seen for a while. It’s very possible that will not be permitted.

Nevertheless, we can’t sink entirely into a slough of despond. What is needed is some cheer that will run all the way through the coming season, something to introduce joy in the simplest of fashions without any fuss.

I offer you the quince.

These begin to appear in the shops in late October, a lime-coloured pear-shaped fruit covered in a pale grey fur. But they should be at their best now, having been given time to mature to a sunny yellow.

Unlike pears - which come from the same Cydonia family - you can’t eat them raw. And, unlike pears, you can’t bite into them. You’ll need to axe them open with a meat cleaver.

So what do they offer on the positive side? Colour and flavour and history. Cooked, their flesh turns from white to a delicate coral pink, giving off a strong flowery scent reminiscent of roses, of which the quince is a relation. Its flavour is delicate, almost illusive, reminiscent of apples (also a member of the same family).

But its most romantic attribute is that it is believed to have been that second most famous apple, the one which Paris gave to Aphrodite and which triggered the Trojan War.

Now common across Europe, quince trees originate in eastern Asia, thriving on rocky slopes in Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Georgia, and further east. Almost ornamental in shape and producing beautiful, quite prominent, pink or white spring blossoms, they make a far greater impact in landscape gardening than other more mundane fruit trees.

Cooked, unpeeled, in slices, their flavour marries well with game dishes, from a wild boar stew to a roast partridge or similar bird. Where it scores, however, is as a jelly more subtle than redcurrant jelly for Sunday roasts or spooning over plain breakfast yogurt, and far more exquisite in colour. The fruit is rich in pectin, so even if you’ve never made jam or jelly before, this recipe won’t fail to set. And, if we are free to celebrate Christmas with others, it fills a jar with a jewel-like clear coral pink jelly to lift flagging spirits and give as a present.

There are some pointers to adhere to. If you overcook the fruit, the jelly’s delicate flavour will be lost, so keep the fruit at a simmer. Under no circumstances touch or squeeze the jelly bag while the juice is being strained or you will produce a cloudy jelly. Don’t necessarily throw away the fruit pulp - you can use it to make membrillo, the Spanish fruit paste so delicious with a hard goats’ or sheep’s cheese.

1.7 kg quinces
2 litres water
granulated sugar, not preserving sugar - quinces contain enough pectin

Wash the quinces, and cut into 2.5cm chunks, only throwing away the stalk.

Add them with the water to a large saucepan and heat until simmering. Cook until the fruit turns soft, about 30 minutes. Mash into a pulp with a potato masher or a stiff whisk.

Spoon the mixture into a jelly bag suspended over a bowl. If you don’t own one, line a colander with muslin and pour the contents of the saucepan carefully into it, to drain into a bowl.

Leave overnight or 8-12 hours for all the juice to drain through.

Set jam jars in a roasting tray and place in a 140°C oven to sterilise.

Weigh the juice and pour back into the cleaned out saucepan. Add to it 75% of the juice’s weight in granulated sugar and heat gently to dissolve the sugar, stirring all the time, then turn the heat up high to rolling-boil the jelly.

To test if the jelly is ready set without a thermometer, put a saucer in a freezer and once chilled, drop a teaspoon of jelly on it and draw a finger through it. If the jelly wrinkles, it is set. Alternatively, pour a little iced water into a saucer and drop a little jelly into it. If it solidifies, it’s ready.

Remove the saucepan from the heat and ladle the jelly into a heatproof jug. Keeping the jamjars in the roasting pan in case one should shatter with the heat (unlikely, but it makes sense to take precautions to prevent a jelly lake on your counter), pour in the jelly and close the jars.

It’s not necessary to make the jelly immediately after cooking it - it can hold for a few days in the fridge, or longer in the freezer.

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

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Lentils

27/11/2020

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There’s something comforting about lentils. They may look like the tiny pebbles that emerge from a pilgrim’s shoe after a long slog to Santiago de Compostela. But a good lentil will soothe a troubled soul just as much as receipt of the compostela certificate from the Pilgrims Office that proves you’ve walked the last 100 kilometres to St James’s tomb. (Or 200 if completing on a bicycle).

The world’s oldest cultivated legume, lentils have sustained the morale and well-being of nations from Ireland to India and beyond for aeons. Stuffed with fibre, they’re a cheap source of protein, along with some potassium and vitamin B and minerals. Added to which, they cook quickly, most particularly the red ones, so are economical with fuel. With sources for sustainable, animal-kind food diminishing, and the quality of the nourishment from our field-grown produce diminishing too, we should turn more to legumes and pulses for our food.

There are four general kinds of lentil - red, yellow, green and brown. The two former are most common to the kitchens of the Indian subcontinent. Stewed with garlic, ginger, and various spices and flavourings, red and yellow lentils are transformed into an abundance of different dhals, scooped up with chapatis or naan and eaten with a variety of vegetable curries or as a side dish to meat.

Green and brown lentils are the more common lentils in European cuisine, although in Britain, yellow lentils made from split peas (so more correctly ‘peas’), are a quintessential part of the ham hock-and-lentil winter soup inspired by ‘snert’, the ham and dried green peas soup traditional in the Netherlands. In both these soups, it’s acceptable, though not authentic, to substitute the dried peas with lentils they resemble.

Green lentils hold their shape better than red or yellow lentils and have a more pronounced, earthy, flavour that doesn’t need spicing up, only propping up with a ‘mirepoix’ flavour foundation. This makes them more generally able to stand up to becoming a salad without turning into mush and become side dishes with a bit of bite.

Green lentils are cultivated widely across Europe, Asia and North Africa. But the very best of them, and almost blue in colour, are the smaller Lentilles de Puy, grown in France. These are so respected, they have their own Protected Designation of Origin, used to confirm that only these lentils carrying the label come from the prefecture of Le Puy in the Auvergne region. They’ve been grown there for over 2000 years. It’s the area’s volcanic soil that is said to give them their unique peppery flavour.

(Before you reach to write to the editor, yes, there also exists the black lentil, named Beluga after the caviare. But while it, too, is highly revered and equally ancient, it isn’t in fact a lentil at all. It’s an urad bean, grown in South Asia. It’s sold whole, but when it’s split, it’s known as the white lentil after its creamy interior.)

Back to the Lentilles de Puys: they marry so well with so many soothing anti-winter dishes, you should stock up with boxes of them. Sausages are twice as good with a stew of Lentilles de Puy. Pork, roasted or grilled as chops, are undressed without a dish of them alongside.

The secret is in what you cook them with, to elevate their glory. The list should include a mirepoix of onion, garlic, carrots and celery, all neatly and finely diced. It might include lardons for added smokiness, into whose fat you soften the previous ingredients. A bay leaf and a good strong stock is then added to cover the lentils, which are stewed over a gentle heat with a saucepan lid on a slant, (more liquid added if they are drying out), until they are cooked through. Then, before serving as a side dish, throw in a small glass of Cognac and stir. For a warm winter salad, omit the Cognac and make a mustardy vinaigrette, then pile the lentils onto a platter lined with leaves of lettuce or mache.

If you remove half of lentils and blitz them to a puree then pour them back into the pan with the whole lentils - adding more stock or water if it needs a little thinning - and you have made a satisfying soup you can dress with garlicky croutons.

If you add left-over lentils to a quantity of mashed potato, roll them into balls and then into a little flour or breadcrumbs and gently fry them, you’ve made a croquette that British grandmothers might have called a rissole.

Lentils - the foundation of a cuddly winter.

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

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Celeriac

27/10/2020

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Aren’t you just tickled pink! Extolling the virtues this time last year of celery, I explained the difference between celery stalks and celeriac - of which root I promised, “more, another time”. Well, guess what. It’s such a suitable autumnal vegetable, that time is now.

It may be because of how it looks - a ball that’s been severely kicked then put through the hot wash bleach cycle, or because it can be dauntingly large - but celeriac doesn’t seem to be much revered. The French make the most of it in celeri remoulade, which is surely on no-one’s Hate List. But celeriac can give so much more.

It’s the same plant as celery, but is cultivated for its root, not its stalks. You can’t swop celery for celeriac and vice versa in recipes that call for them by name. Like celery, it can be eaten raw or cooked, and while it has the same flavour as the stalks, that flavour is sweetened and mellowed when exposed to heat.

You may have assumed it was a cold region vegetable exclusive to the northern hemisphere where it’s grown across Northern Europe, Siberia and North America. But it’s also cultivated in North Africa and Southwest Asia, albeit in their cooler high regions. And a close relation, Cepa de apio criollo (Creole celery root), is a tuber with a similar flavour to celeriac, common in farmers markets from Dominica and Puerto Rico, where it is used to make traditional soups, to Venezuela and other Latin American countries, again, grown in highland regions.

I dare to propose that along with potato, celeriac is the most versatile vegetable we cultivate in the West. You can boil it, steam it, roast it, mash it, grate it, fry it, and turn it into the most soothing of winter soups. All that’s required for that, at its most simple, is a base of finely chopped leek and onion stewed in butter till soft, chunks of peeled celeriac thrown in and everything softened in milk or stock, then blitzed and a generous pour of cream added. Crumble crisp cooked bacon over to serve.

But that’s just the start of it. Look up a Latkes recipe and swop the potato for celeriac. Fry the Latkes not in the traditional chicken schmaltz (chicken fat) but in duck fat for a Perigord take, and dab each golden disc with a blob of creme fraiche to serve, possibly with a teaspoon of horseradish mixed into it.

Celeriac roasted whole has been on hip restaurant menus for a year or two. Scrub the celeriac thoroughly and rub it well with olive oil and the leaves from 6 sprigs of thyme or a spice like finely ground cumin or coriander, or simply salt it well. Wrap it tightly in foil, set in a pan and roast for 2 hours until soft. Spread the foil open and roast 30 minutes more to crisp up the skin. Cut into wedges, drizzle hazelnut oil and lemon juice over it, sprinkle with sea salt and serve with a seared steak, a roast of meat, or just by itself with a vinegary salad.

For a comforting gratin, slice equal quantities of peeled potatoes and celeriac and layer them with thin slices of one onion in a gratin dish. Season, cover with cream and dot with butter. Bake in 180C oven for about an hour or until bubbling and gold.

These wedges marry well with any meat dish - from roast to braise.
Roasted celeriac wedges with sage and walnuts

1 tablespoon olive oil
135ml maple syrup or honey
1kg celeriac, scrubbed clean then peeled
15g fresh sage leaves, shredded
1 teaspoon sea salt flakes
175g walnuts

Preheat oven to 400F/200°C.

Beat the oil and syrup together in a jug. Cut the celeriac into 2.5cm wide wedges, and spread over a roasting pan. Drizzle half the maple syrup and oil over the wedges and toss them with clean hands to coat thoroughly. Roast for 20-25 minutes till the wedges begin to soften, turning them halfway through.

Add the sage, salt and walnuts to the remaining maple syrup and oil, whisk then spoon over the celeriac. Continue to roast for 10-12 minutes more, or until the celeriac just begins to caramelise.

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

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Home-made Nutella

30/9/2020

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When my family moved from Soviet Moscow to Washington DC, we were ripe for food experiences - of any kind. We had lived for four years off cabbage, potatoes, and meat from the local markets that had been butchered with a chainsaw, so came replete with shards of bone. Sometimes the butchers didn’t show up, so we only had cabbage and potatoes.

There was, of course, a wider choice - of glorious vegetables and fruits from the then-Soviet republic of Georgia. But you needed a budget to match. When I told my husband’s editor we needed to renegotiate our food allowance because cauliflowers cost $20 a kilo, he messaged back the single line: “So don’t buy cauliflower.” Cauliflower was the only vegetable available at the time.

The girls were 4 and 6 when they hit American supermarkets and the fridges and store cupboards of their school friends’ houses, impressionable ages. One of the first products they encountered - and the most immediately seductive - was Nutella.

I was persuaded (by the underhand means practised universally by cunning children, of tears, stamping of feet and a refusal to eat) to stock our own supply. I kept it on the upper shelf of a high cabinet for special occasions, and in order not to expose them to their playtime friends as the victims of utter deprivation.

One afternoon, I reached up to fetch the full jar to make sandwiches for the next batch of after-school squealers. Lifting it off the shelf, my hand shot up and banged against the roof of the cupboard, a motion not unlike the over-counting of steps down a staircase causing the ankles to crumple on the floor. Confused, I opened the Nutella and found the insides completely hollowed out, but for a thin and unbroken smear that lined the glass that had convinced me, till I learned otherwise, that the jar was full.

No-one could disagree with children that Nutella is an ambrosia of total delight. Melted chocolate praline to spread on bread? What’s not to love. But it’s not one of the best foods to encourage a child to eat. Not only is it very high in sugar, but it’s very high in palm oil, modified to encourage its spreadability and containing a significant quantity of saturated fats. Palm oil is not the most healthy ingredient for children. But it’s also not a healthy ingredient for the environment. For years, it came from plantations whose management had an enormous impact on deforestation. The pesticides their management required released effluents into the soil and water, and endangered the lives of elephants, orangutans, rhinoceri and Sumatran tigers.

Following a wide public campaign, the makers of Nutella have now committed to a supply of palm oil from sustainable sources. That’s good news. But it doesn’t affect the amount of sugar employed in the spread’s creation.

Nutella’s deliciousness can’t be ignored, however.

We’re about to enter hazelnut season, so you can easily make your own spread, without using sugar and certainly no palm oil, sustainable or otherwise. Enough spread for a good sized jar will only take you half an hour to compose, start to finish. A supply of it is good to have around, not just to keep your children on side, but it makes a delectable icing for a cake.

150g hazelnuts (dried, not milky)
250g chocolate, broken up
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 tablespoons good-flavoured honey
1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 175C.

Melt the chocolate in a saucepan over simmering water and stir until smooth. Cool completely.

Toast the hazelnuts on a baking sheet in the oven for 10-12 minutes until they’ve browned a little and their skins blister. Pour them into a kitchen towel and rub enthusiastically to get rid of as much loose skin as possible. If you take them outside, you can blow the skins off. Otherwise, just try to keep the skin bits away from the exposed nuts.

Cool the nuts then grind them in a blender or processor to form a paste. Add all the remaining ingredients except for the chocolate and blitz again until completely smooth. Then add the melted chocolate and blend again. Pour into sterilized jars. It will thicken as it cools.

Then store on the highest shelf you have.

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

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Marrow Rum

30/8/2020

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I’ve probably said it before, but marrows are the worst vegetables in the world. No! Stuff them, you challenge, and they’re delicious. Yes - because the stuffing is delicious, not the marrow. So why spoil it by encasing it in something the taste and texture of wet wads of sheep’s wool. Yet in our patager every year, our crop of marrows is greater than any other vegetable because I forget to pick the courgettes when they’re in their prime. One day, they’re the size of thumbs, which counts as vegecide if you pick them that small. The very next day, they’ve inflated into inedible torpedoes.

But it turns out there’s a very rewarding solution even for these monsters. One result of lockdown is the manner in which so many people have discovered in themselves a spirit of Victory Garden make-do-and-mend initiative. One of the austerity recipes that have been pressed upon me is for Marrow Rum. It is inspiring enough to make sure that if I do remember to harvest the courgettes while they are still worth eating, I’m going to let two of them expand into marrows, one for each leg. No, not my legs - although it has been said when it comes to alcohol my legs are hollow. The legs of a pair of tights. Read on; you’ll see.

The basic principle is to allow a marrow to grow fat enough that its skin becomes so tough you need a hatchet to break it up. Instead of wrecking it that way, though, you take off its stem end with a bread knife, low enough down to be close to where you can guess the seeds begin to appear. Then scoop them all out and discard them. Pack the hollow with Demerara sugar then stuff a marrow down the leg of a pair of tights - or two legs for two marrows, so long as you make sure neither marrow touches the other. Hang the marrow above a clean bucket in a warm place and leave it to rot. What eventually drips into the bucket is Marrow Rum.

I can’t imagine you aren’t as excited as me to try this out, so full instructions follow. You don’t need to make it immediately. Once a marrow’s skin has hardened, it won’t rot and you can wait until the end of high summer’s exhausting temperatures to begin brewing.

Ingredient amounts depend on the size of the marrow. You need wine yeast but if you can’t find any, at a pinch bread yeast can substitute. Otherwise, you want Demerara sugar and 1 orange per marrow.

Method for one large inedible marrow

In two tablespoons of cool water from a boiled kettle, dissolve 2 teaspoons of Demerara sugar. Stir it in the juice of the orange. Add the yeast and leave, covered with muslin, for 8 hours or overnight to begin the fermentation.
Saw off the stalk end of the marrow with a good sharp bread knife or a clean saw and set it aside.
Scoop out all the seeds and pith and discard. Hammer a few holes in the bottom of the marrow with a clean skewer. Press Demerara sugar tightly inside the hollow then pour over the sugar-and-yeast liquid and put the stalk lid back on top, securing it with duct tape to seal the marrow container.
Carefully slide the marrow, stalk end upwards, into a leg of the tights and hang it above a clean bowl in a warm place.
After two to three weeks, liquid should start to drip into the clean bowl. It will take around 3 months before the dripping slows down and all you’re left with is the hard shell of the marrow and some squidgy marrow pulp. Squeeze it and whatever sludge remains in the tights, to extract every last drop of juice.
Bottle in clean bottles, cork, and leave until next year’s marrow season - if you can - to raise a toast to the glory of vegetable torpedoes as they expand from courgettes into your subsequent rum supply.

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

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Apricots

16/7/2020

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It’s a truism to say that food is as much about culture as it is about appetite. The chilly north of Europe has never included in its national cuisines the quantities of chillies that go into the dishes of Asia. Nor has the climate east of the Bosphorus, meteorological and religious, encouraged the promotion of cows for the production of cream and butter. The French consider the British pairing of mint sauce with roast lamb a desecration even while they are happy to serve blackcurrant sauce with duck.

What is interesting, though, is when the addition of certain ingredients strays, in the view of the eater, into the zone of possible physical danger. Living in Washington DC for almost 20 years, it was as difficult towards the end of that period as it was at the start to get hold of offal. Most supermarkets - independent butchers are rare - sell a spread of skinless chicken breasts, a lesser stock of thighs and legs, a display of vermillion-red cuts of beef, pork roasts and very thin un-fatty chops - the Other White Meat, as it’s marketed, with its implication of better health attached.

Newly arrived, I drove all over the capital in search of kidneys to make a steak-and-kidney pie, to introduce new American friends to British culture. Finding a complicit French butcher behind the meat country of an upmarket food store, I nevertheless had to sign a Food & Drug Administration form saying I fully understood the dangers of eating offal and another form that exonerated him from liability should any health issue arise.

The kidneys weren’t available at the time. They had to be ordered from some independent location. Nor would they be fresh. They arrived several days later, frozen into a brick. When the guests sat down at the dinner in front of the traditional British pie, they each carefully removed every piece of kidney and set it aside on the rim of their plates.

More recently, we had a friend from another European country to stay. She sat at the kitchen counter watching me make Tarte aux Abricots, chatting away as I rolled the pastry about the joys of French food and how impressive was the French way of using every part of everything, having been served the previous night a warm salad of wilted radish and beetroot leaves. However, she had her limits, too.

When I cracked open the stones of the apricots, blanched their kernels to remove their skins and scatter the nuts over the apricot tart, she rebelled. Surely they would give her cyanide poisoning. Despite my assurance that she would have to eat the weight of her head in apricot kernels before she was in any danger, she was clearly unsettled enough that I had to use almond slivers instead to make her feel safe.

You can use whichever you prefer for the apricot tart below.

I offer this recipe because the method applies to any soft fruit - although you will find that plums leak a good deal of juice in the baking. I don’t find that a drawback, but it does make the pastry a little soggy. In a good plum-y way, in my view. It also works beautifully as an apple tart. Peel and core the apples, then cut them into slices you overlap down the pastry. Baking a fruit tart in a rectangle saves an awful lot of work and avoids that struggle of getting pastry and fruit happily settled into a round tin. Also, it slices more easily.

Serves 4-6

250g plain or puff pastry
500g fresh apricots, halved and stoned
Kernels of apricots for scattering, or almond slivers (optional)
100g unsalted butter, melted
150g caster sugar
Icing sugar for dusting

Preheat oven to 200C.

Roll out pastry to a rectangle on a flour-dusted work surface and lay on a large buttered baking sheet. Use the tip of a knife to score a light line all the way round, 1 cm from the edge.

Crack the apricot stones and remove their kernels. Blanch the kernels in boiling water for 1 minute, then drain off the water and skin them. Arrange apricots as tightly as possible over pastry, cut side up. Brush the apricots and the pastry edges with the melted butter, sprinkle the fruit with sugar and scatter almond kernels or slivers over. Bake for 30-40 minutes, till the apricots are soft and beginning to char a little. Charring is important, adding a caramel flavour. Sieve over icing sugar just before serving and eat at room temperature on its own or with creme fraiche, or ice cream.

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

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Blackcurrants

25/6/2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To make blackcurrant sorbet, you need

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

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

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

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

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

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Jugged hare/Civet de lievre

8/6/2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jugged hare/Civet de lievre
Serves 8
For the marinade

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

For the casserole

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

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

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

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

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

Serve with potato puree or buttered tagliatelle.

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

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