Полная версия
Fresh Pomegranate Jelly
Mutton Leg Chops with Ginger and Pomegranate Salsa
Pork
Roast Middle Loin of Pork
Roast Spare Rib of Pork Stuffed with Prunes
Warm Pork Sandwiches with Apple Sauce
Cold Pork with Anchovy and Caper Sauce
Potted Pork with Basil
Toast
Butter and Radishes
Leek Jam
Pickled Pears
Lettuce with Dressing
Cucumber Pickle
Pork Chump Chops Braised with Lentils, Cider and Cream
Raised Pork and Duck Pie
Braised Hand of Pork with Wine
Potatoes
Whipped Potatoes with Lancashire Cheese
Potato and Fresh Cheese in an Olive Oil Pastry Pie
Prawns and Shrimps
Prawn Salad with Raw Apple, Rhubarb and Walnut Oil
Pint of Shell-on Prawns with Scrumpy Butter
Shrimp (or Prawn) Shell Broth with Ale and Straw Mushrooms
Potted Shrimps with Egg Pasta
Prawn and Shrimp Stock
Mathias’s Prawn Curry with Coconut Tea’
Quince
Roast Quince
Rabbit
Potted Rabbit with Pork, Rosemary, Pink Pepper and Lemon
Radishes
Butter and Radishes
Radish and Horseradish Sauce
Rice – Short Grain
Tornato Rice
Rice – Long Grain
Spiced Rice with Cauliflower, Coconut, Cloves and Ginger
Brökens Pudding with Caramelised Pineapple
Roots
Roasted Mixed Root Vegetables
Raw Roots
Sweet Potato Stew with Crab, Coriander, Lime and Butter
Carrot Butter Sauce
Carrot Soup
Roses
Lamb with Rose and Almonds
Blancmange with Crystallised Rose Petals
Runner Beans
Runner Beans with Shallot, Mustard, Oil and Vinegar
Beans, Beans and Beans
Sardines
Grilled Sardines with Bread, Walnut and Chilli Sauce
Canned Pilchards with New Potatoes
Sausages
Sausage Meatballs and Farro Broth with Mustard
Wurst with Butterbeans, Tarragon, Leeks and Cream
Scallops
Scallops Baked in Their Shells with Mace
Squash and Pumpkin
Baked Gem Squash
Pumpkin Soup
Sweetbreads
Lamb Sweetbreads Wrapped in Ham with Peas and Lovage
Tea
Tea-soaked Fruitcake
Lemon Lapsang Souchong Jelly
Tomatoes
A Cooked Tomato Store
Tomato and Spelt Soup
Chilled Tomato, Lime, Basil and Lemon Grass Soup
Skinned Tomato and Dandelion Salad
Trotters and Knuckles
Spelt Groats, Knuckle of Pork and Herbs
Pig’s Trotter, Woodpigeon and Wheat Soup with Cobnut and Watercress Sauce
Rhythms of Dinner and a Time to Eat Soup
Turkey
Roast Turkey with Dried Cherry, Apple and Cornbread Stuffing and Duck and Chestnut Forcemeat
Turkey Legs Stuffed with Nettles and Garlic
Using Turkey Stock
Using Cold Turkey
Veal
Baked Short Pasta with Veal Meatballs and Green Ricotta
Stuffed Breast of Veal
Watercress
Watercress Soup
Watercress and Radish Sauce for Pasta
Wheat
Bread Soups
Wild Yeast Bread
Thin Breads
Three-minute Spelt Bread
‘Saffron’ Buns
Airy Buns
Berkswell Cheese Scones
Farro with Potatoes and Basil Oil
Spelt and Lentil Salad with Lots of Parsley
Wild Salmon
Poached Wild Salmon
Wild Salmon and Halibut Cured and Served in Soy, Lime and Garlic Broth
Woodpigeon
Pigeon Breasts with Buttered Shrimps
Potted Pigeon Salad with Celery and Mustard Dressing
Pigeon Rice with Figs and Whole Wheat
APPLES
Apple Soup
Apple, Red Cabbage and Watercress Salad
Hot Apple Juice
Russet Jelly Ice
An apple is often the earliest of our food memories. From the moment an infant takes its first carefully sieved apple purée, to the apple in the lunchbox or the one pinched from a tree in next door’s garden, apples are always close by. For busy students and workers, they are a constant – reliable pocket fodder or desktop picnic regular. Apple turnovers and doughnuts are just another, naughtier, form of the fruit. Then young families make their first apple crumble, and over time come apple snow, pies, tarts and charlottes. Non-pudding eaters never tire of apples with cheese. Then after this lifetime with a fruit that is a symbol of the heart, some of us will face the end with the occasional bowl of apple purée again. I hope I do, teeth or no teeth.
Apples are an emblem of what is wrong and what is right about our food supply. There are thousands of varieties but only a handful of them are grown commercially – a monoculture that squanders custom and harms the environment. But this dent in diversity is now – slowly – reversing, with apple farmers bringing traditional varieties to city markets and even supermarkets putting a few unfamiliar apples on their shelves. There has been a revival of apple customs, community orchards and ‘Apple Days’, when children can taste some odd things made with apples and adults get squiffy on farmhouse cider. Yet Britain grows a shamefully small crop. It was once enormous, but the creation of a free market with other European countries in the 1970s saw British farmers chop down every tree, grub them up and plant a more valuable crop. Did they know at the time that to destroy an orchard is to terminate the survival of a menagerie of wildlife, including the vital wild bee population? They do now, and so does Defra (the Department of Food and Rural Affairs), which is offering incentives to farmers planting orchards. So there’s hope – a long way still to go, but I feel optimistic.
Sold in every greengrocer’s, every paper shop, everywhere, apples have become an everyday thing to take for granted – eating one is like brushing your teeth or taking a bus. Like it or not. I like it when the home crop is in season and varieties jig in and out of the autumn and winter months, but not when the stickers on the fruit show that it has travelled long haul even though our own are in season. I’d rather feel the rough skin of a Russet on my lip and taste its firm, mellow flesh than have my face sprayed with the acidic juice of an import that has been bred for looks but not taste. I am happy not to eat peaches in late summer, preferring to wait for those anonymous native apples that drop off local trees, whose red skin stains their white insides pink. That’s what I call exotic.
But why are English apples just that bit better? Here is a fruit that, unlike tomatoes, likes its adopted country. The chemistry between the apple tree, our climate and our soil yields a fruit that has intricate melodies of taste and texture. Commercially grown French apples have tarty PVC skin and astringent flesh; our ordinary Cox’s, on the other hand, are dressed for the weather, with sturdy, windcheater hides holding in their mellow juices.
Perhaps we should rethink when to eat apples. For almost ten months of the year, from late July to early May, there is the home-grown supply: the Pippins, Pearmains, Russets and other esoteric types. There are even free apples if you can get at some windfalls. You don’t have to own a tree, but good contacts help. My mother-in-law brings us hers when she visits us in town. Fallen apples are not always the best to eat in the hand, having been bashed about a bit, but they cook well.
Buying apples
For the interesting ones, visit your local farmers’ market and buy lots. Store them in the dark, where they will keep well, then it won’t be the end of the world if the weekly market trip cannot be made. To find a farmers’ market, look at your local council website. London markets can be located at www.lfm.org.uk. There are other independently run produce markets, such as Borough Market in southeast London, and you will sometimes find locally grown apples in ordinary street markets across the country. Look out also for country markets, run by the WI – your nearest can be located on www.country-markets.co.uk.
A novel way to buy apples is by post. Try Charlton Orchards (www.charltonorchards.com; tel: 01823 412959). For information about starting or locating community orchards, or learning about apple varieties and customs, contact the Dorset-based organisation, Common Ground (www.commonground.org.uk).
Which apple to use
The season for British apples runs from July to May. Early varieties ripen on the tree and do not store well, then the later ones start to come in. Some of these can be eaten immediately, but others need time in storage for the sugars to develop. Sometimes this can take months, hence the long apple season. Cox’s, for example, are picked in late September but are not ripe until late October. Modern storage facilities have also lengthened the season. There are a few varieties that are specifically for cooking (like the Bramley) but the truth is that you can cook with any eating apple. It is best, though, to cook them when they are still a little unripe, so the flavour will be stronger.
Good apples tend to be very good on the inside but a little knobbly in looks. They may have rough bumps, come in odd shapes or have some pest damage but, providing the flesh is not bruised or discoloured and the juice is sweet, this will not affect the way they cook.
Familiar native apples
Bramley The prototypical cooking apple, tart and firm, but not the one with the most interesting taste. Bramleys have a thick skin, normally pared away for cooking, and a flesh that cooks to a pale and puffy soft purée. They always need sweetening and are traditionally used in pies and crumbles. I prefer to bake smaller dessert apples, but a baked Bramley with its foaming hot flesh is something of a classic.
Cox’s Orange Pippin An eating apple (that can also be cooked) with a mellow, yellow-tinted flesh and a slightly rough, red-and green-tinted skin. British commercial growers like to grow Cox’s because they last until March in storage. They are a good apple, sweet enough to cook without sugar yet they work well with savoury things, too (see Bacon and Apples). When shopping, look out for their Pippin relatives for new aromas, colours and flavours.
Egremont Russet Their smallness makes these eating apples irritating to prepare for cooking but, used slightly underripe, they have a beautiful sharpness and can hold their shape. I put them in tarts, and make an ice with a jelly prepared from whole Russets. They are ideal for the soup. They ripen in late October and there is a good supply until December.
Discovery My favourite apple to eat raw. The pink from the skin tints the flesh and they have a knockout scent. Use in salads with toasted pumpkin seeds and fruity cheeses like Cheddar, or cook them with blackberries. They ripen on the tree in July/August and must be eaten quickly.
Worcester Pearmain This is the classic bright-red striped English eating apple, available in winter (but rarely after Christmas). The juice is sharp and fragrant. The colour fades when cooked, so Worcesters are better eaten raw. Use them in salads, with walnuts and blue cheese.
Unfamiliar native apples
Blenheim Orange These eating apples are often mentioned in old cookery books as excellent cooking apples, too. They cook down to a drier, more textured purée than regular cooking apples and are thought to be ideal for charlottes (a fruit pudding baked in a straight-sided dish lined with buttered bread, then turned out to serve).
Newton Wonder A sweet cooking apple that ripens in late December and is available through January. Remove the core, stuff the cavity with dried figs and treacle, then bake in a low oven and eat with good vanilla ice cream.
Laxton’s Fortune An early eating apple with Pippin ancestors, this ripens in September and should be eaten quickly, raw.
Tydeman’s Late Orange A dry-skinned Russet with plenty of aromatic juice, this eating apple ripens in January. Core it, stuff the cavity with raisins, wrap in shortcrust pastry, then brush with egg and bake. Eat with custard or sweetened cream cheese.
Scarlet Pimpernel An adorable small, fragrant apple that ripens in August. Fry them in a pan, sprinkle with brown sugar and serve with barbecued pork chops. Or eat raw, with cobnuts.
Ashmead’s Kernel An eating apple that doubles as a cider apple, with yellow, firm-textured flesh that keeps well. Good for making Apple Soup, or peel, core and braise with duck and haricot beans for a sweet, winter dish.
Crab apple The parent species of every apple, crab apples are always sour, very fragrant and have a nice habit of turning rusty pink when cooked. The best possible use for them is to make a syrup or jelly. Put the quartered apples in a pan with some water and simmer until soft. Suspend a muslin jelly bag over a chair, place a bowl beneath and tip the cooked apples into the bag. Do not force it; let the juice drip through naturally. Measure the juice, add 500g/1lb 2oz granulated sugar for every 600ml/1 pint liquid, boil for about 15 minutes then put into jars. It will set into a delicate pink jelly.
Breakfast apple There isn’t any such species but I use this as a catch-all word for apples I cannot identify. I peel and core them and then cook them to a soft purée. This is my regular breakfast, which I eat with honey, yoghurt and linseed.
Apple Soup
This is a buttery, sweet and sour soup that makes an ideal everyday lunch reheated from the fridge. It can be made with any apple but it is better if they are slightly unripe or sour. Its flavour will change depending on the apple variety, and it is a good way to use up those wrinkly apples that have been sitting in the fruit bowl for too long. I recommend using a food processor to chop the fruit and vegetables. You don’t have to use homemade chicken stock – water or even apple juice is fine. If you use water, you will probably need to add more salt.
For a bigger meal, put this soup on the table with bread and cheese, or ham or potted meat with toast.
Serves 4
85g/3oz unsalted butter, plus extra to serve
1 large or 2 small white onions, roughly chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
12 apples, peeled, cored and chopped small
2 celery sticks with their leaves. chopped
leaves from 2 sprigs of thyme
5 allspice seeds, ground in a mortar and pestle (or ½ teaspoon ready-ground allspice)
1.2 litres/2 pints chicken stock, pressed apple juice or water
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Melt the butter in a large pan and add the onion, garlic, apples, celery, thyme leaves and allspice. Cook over a low heat until the onion and apples soften. Add the stock, bring to the boil and cook until the apples are quite tender. This should take about 15 minutes – don’t overcook it or the fresh flavours will be lost. Add black pepper, then taste and add salt if necessary. Serve with a knob of creamy unsalted butter melting in each bowlful.
Apple, Red Cabbage and Watercress Salad
I want to eat smaller, mayonnaise-bound salads instead of large bowls of rocket and mizuna dressed with olive oil and smothered in cheese. I like those spiky salad leaves but, after 10 years of enthusiasm, it is nice to turn instead to neat forkfuls of vegetables, herbs, nuts, fruits, perhaps cured meat or leftover chicken, clinging together with the help of an oil—egg emulsion like mayonnaise. Even a small amount fills and fuels you through an afternoon. These salads keep for 2 or 3 days in the fridge, so are a useful everyday graze. Leaves need not be left out. In the following recipe, they are part of the dressing.
This apple-based salad is lovely eaten alone but good, too, with hot boiled gammon, cold ham or cured sausage.
Serves 4
6 apples (the red skins of Worcesters are effective with the cabbage)
a squeeze of lemon juice
¼ red cabbage
2 tablespoons walnut halves
a little oil
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
For the dressing:
2 egg yolks
1 heaped teaspoon Dijon mustard
2 bunches of watercress, chopped
300ml/½ pint light olive oil, sunflower oil or groundnut oil
1–2 tablespoons white wine vinegar, to taste
1 tablespoon cornichons (baby gherkins), drained and finely chopped
First make the dressing: put the egg yolks and mustard into a bowl and mix well with a small whisk. Add the chopped watercress, then beat in the oil, a few drops at a time to begin with, then adding it a little faster once a third of it has been incorporated. If you add the oil too quickly it may curdle. Mix in the vinegar with the cornichons and set to one side.
Quarter the apples, remove the cores and slice them thinly, leaving the skins on. Dress with a little lemon juice to stop discoloration. Shred the cabbage as finely as possible, keeping the crunchy stalk. Put both the apple and cabbage into a bowl, then pour over enough of the dressing to give a good covering (set the rest aside; it will store well in a jar in the fridge).
Mix the salad gently so the apple slices do not break. Taste a little and add salt if necessary. Season with black pepper.
Toast the walnut halves in a pan with a little oil over a medium heat, then grind them in a pestle and mortar or chop them to a rough consistency. Scatter the nuts over the plates of salad as you serve it, spooning the salad on to the plates in appetisingly high mounds.
Hot Apple Juice
I am no fan of flasks filled with old tea for car journeys, but it is good to stop and sip something hot that was not bought at gross prices from service stations. This is a family invention to solve the problem. Pressed apple juice, with a little spice and light muscovado sugar, lasts all day as long as there is a decent Thermos to store it in. Try to use the best pressed apple juice, not one made from concentrate – juice made from concentrate can taste metallic. I sometimes buy direct from farmers’ markets in the city, although you can buy pressed apple juice in supermarkets, too.
Heat 1 litre/1¾ pints apple juice to boiling point and add ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon and a tiny pinch of ground cloves. Sweeten with light muscovado sugar to taste. If you are putting the juice into a flask, remember to wash it out first with boiling water.
Russet Jelly Ice
I like this ice when it has a slightly bruised, windfall scent, like the musty inside of an apple store. The base is a jelly, extracted from whole apples or leftover apple peelings. Fresh apple is grated into the jelly before freezing but not before allowing it to brown a little – for that orchard-floor taste.
This is not a quick recipe but it is a very worthwhile one, especially if you use up windfalls. Try it with various apple varieties, including crab apple – you should see some interesting fluctuations in taste. Using slightly unripe apples will heighten the flavour.
Serves 6–8
10 Russet apples, plus 6 more to grate in at the end
golden granulated sugar 2 egg whites
Chop the 10 apples into quarters, leaving the cores, stalks and skin on, and put them into a big, heavy-bottomed pan. Cover (only just) with water, bring to the boil and cook very slowly – it should murmur and bubble rather than simmer fast. This ensures the apples do not change flavour, and they will turn a pretty, rusty-pink colour. When you have a thick, sloppy purée, line a colander with muslin and set it over a bowl (or use a jelly bag, if you have one). Spoon the purée into the muslin. Do not push the purée or stir it; just let the juice drip naturally into the bowl through the cloth. Make sure the cloth is high above the bowl so it will not touch the juice in the bowl as it fills. This can take at least a couple of hours or overnight – you need to extract every last bit of juice.
Measure the volume of juice and add 450g/1lb granulated sugar for every 600ml/1 pint. Put it into a saucepan and bring to the boil. Simmer for about 10 minutes – the liquid will clarify as it boils and become syrupy. Allow to cool down to about 40°C/104°F (hotter than bathwater). Meanwhile, grate the flesh and skin of the 6 remaining apples – leave to brown a little, then add to the syrup. Whisk the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the apple mixture. Pour into a container and place in the freezer. After an hour or so, stir to loosen the ice, then freeze again (or use an ice-cream maker if you have one). Serve with Pistachio Biscuits – made with another nut (walnut, for example), if you prefer.
ASPARAGUS
Asparagus with Pea Shoots and Mint
Boiled or Steamed Asparagus
Being one of those slow-growing vegetables with a short (eight-week) glut, British asparagus comes at a price too high for it to be anything but a treat. Having said that, I would be happy to live off bread and lentils at that time if I could eat asparagus by the kilo. Its arrival in the shops is a happy moment, an affirmation of spring. When the supply begins to dwindle and the spears begin to look a little hairy and overblown, it’s like the end of a birthday.
British asparagus should be all over the place in season, which, depending on the weather, runs from late April to the third week of June. Look for it in greengrocer’s shops and supermarkets; the boxes are usually heavily emblazoned with Union Jacks. Buying asparagus locally not only supports farmers in the region where you live, it also makes sense in terms of freshness. Competing with it will be the Spanish. I have to say I am not unhappy about using Spanish asparagus before the British season begins because it can be very good. Air-freighted baby Peruvian and Thai asparagus is tasteless and pointless.
