Nourish Me

cherry season

My dessert repertoire, alas, grows ever smaller: a (mostly) waning interest in sugar and wheat means you'll get either Lesh's chocolate and date balls or the chocolate cake from Supper For A Song. BUT here it is, cherry season already and occasionally what's required from the kitchen is something more celebratory, something that feels like a proper dessert. Simple and untaxing if possible given it'll probably be hot. A cherry pie at some stage between late December and January feels right; fits the bill rather nicely.

Pitting cherries is, I admit, a chore, but you're probably on holiday somewhere anyway if it's cherry season. Pitting over the kitchen sink could be viewed a kind of meditation, no? Bloody juices a part of the (beautiful) deal. 

Much of the pleasure of reading Nigel Slater lies in his choice of words. Good recipe writing is an artform, one I can only aspire to, and his recipes are excellent writing full stop. Of the pastry Slater uses to top a plum pie (and I chose to cover every single fruit pie I make) he says, "The crust is very short, and it really doesn't matter if it tears as you lower it over the fruit. Some of the juice will probably erupt through the crust as it cooks anyway. At least I hope so." 

I toss pitted cherries in a teaspoon of cornflour and a palmful of whatever sugar is to hand in the base of an enamel pie dish. I then make the pastry using roughly equal measures of oat and barley flours in place of the plain flour he uses to make an even shorter crust, one I squash with the heel of my hand into a thick circle, gently lift on top of the fruit and press out with fingers to the lip of the pie dish. It's very forgiving and very, very good.  

Happy holidays, peoples! Three mad-busy shopping days to go, so, be nice to all the sales staff out there and, if you're stuck for what to buy someone tricky, buy a damned book. One you've loved. Best bloody gift there is, a book. xxx  

 

 

rice pudding

 

If pushed, I might just have to admit that Kingsley Amis is my favourite writer. Perhaps because of this, I also happen to love the work of his long-suffering partner, the late (great) Elizabeth Jane Howard. Howard's love of cooking may have bypassed Amis, who famously preferred vats of booze to her carefully crafted meals, but she did manage to hand it along to a young Tamasin Day-Lewis while the latter's father lay dying, poetically, in the Amis' home. After some searching I tracked down a copy of On Food (as opposed, I now wonder, to Amis' brilliant On Drinking) a book she wrote with Fay Maschler in the 1980's. It was worth the effort, for the writing is superb. This, from a chapter titled Jane Grigson to Dinner sums up why rice pudding has been, for a long time, something I have actively avoided:

To restore delectability to a dish that has been desecrated and damaged by institutional, or simply negilgent cooking, is a crafty tactic in the business of feeding a foodie. Rice pudding, sinned against by schools, hospitals, prisons, no doubt, and the nursery is an ideal candidate.

For all that sinning - and the sins above are great indeed - rice pudding is simply not a dessert I grew up with, therefore, I don't long for it in the way that, say, Peter and his boys do. Then, one weekend some months ago, I found myself with a litre of super-fresh raw milk and no use for it. Rice pudding finally called.

Simple things, done well, are worth mastering. My rice pudding is based, rather loosely, on Nigella Lawson's in How to Eat. Need I also add that this is gluten-free dessert at its easiest? Good milk makes all the difference here. Raw if you can get it, but failing that, full-fat unhomgenised milk that is either organic or, better still, biodynamic. Trust me. 

a rice pudding

Preheat the oven to 150 C. In an oven-proof dish you will be serving the pudding in at the table, place a large knob of butter. The real stuff, please. Pop the dish in the oven while it comes to temperature so the butter melts gently, then swirl it around the dish, just to coat things. I often skip this and just whack a knob of butter in with the following ingredients, but your call. Add 4 level tablespoons of arborio rice (3 if you're using Australian measures), lots of vanilla extract (a split-and-scraped pod or 2 would be ideal, but one is not always made of money), 3 level tablespoons of sugar (of your choice, of course) and 500 mls (2 cups) of milk. You will probably need more milk along the way, so make sure you have some. Stir well, and place in the oven for 2 1/2 hours, stirring every half hour or so, adding more milk as you see fit.

Serve with big splodges of jam, at the table.  

 

reformed vegetarian guilt

The brace of wild ducks currently decimating my beetroot and green manure crops, who make themselves quite at home on the winter-filled dam, knew, I swear it, that I was cooking one of their kin last weekend. Normally cautious at the best of times, they exploded into the air whenever I stepped over the threshold on Friday, landed with a double thud and slipped under the wire to the safety of the back fence, eyeing me warily through it until I was well out of sight again. I love those guys. Love them even more when they bring their babes, later in the year, to swim in the cold, clear spring water. Reformed Vegetarian Guilt, right there. Hmm.    

In the kitchen, their roasted relative was less than stellar, I am sorry to say. Tamasin Day-Lewis had warned that duck is "notoriously difficult to carve" and she was correct. We butchered it trying to prise small amounts of meat from what looked, for all intents and purposes, to be a glorious bronzed breast. Found myself wishing I'd made duck confit again, as I'd done some weeks before. Anyway, newsflash: you can do the initial slow cooking of duck legs in olive oil rather than vats of duck fat which, though veering toward expensive, won't set you back nearly as much as 7 or 8 tins of poultry fat will. Thank you, Adrian Richardson. The truth is though that duck is a meat best reserved, in my case at least, for once a year occasions. A roasted chook is better value, more satisfying and, dare I suggest, a more festive option. Lessons, lessons. Always.    

 

chicken pie

Discussing respective xmas dinners late last year, I mentioned to Cath our now ritualistic chicken pie. She asked for the recipe so this is what I typed out while not eating one fasting day at werk. I am going to assume two things here: 1, that you will buy the best chicken you can afford and 2, that you will read the recipe through at least a couple of times before beginning. This pie is work, there is no other way of describing it, so save it for special occasions or when you have all day to potter about in the fug of your kitchen. Please note that a pie bird, despite the illustration above, isn't actually required, in fact the pie is not deep enough to warrant one, but I dunno, there's something rather charming about a bird bursting through a pastry crust.       

chicken pie

Poach a whole chook very gently with:

The green top of a leek, a peeled carrot, a stick of celery, some parsley and a splosh of white wine (optional). About an hour should do it - don't let it boil, let it putter away instead.

When cool enough to handle, remove the bird from the poaching liquor (but retain this) and tear flesh into long shreds, working with the grain. Spoon a little of the poaching liquor over chook and refrigerate while you make a stock with the bones and skin and remaining liquor. You want a rich, reduced stock of which you'll use but little, however leftover stock both freezes well and makes a nice starter. Strain and reserve when ready. 

To make pie:

Dice 1-2 carrots (peeled), a couple of stalks of celery; the white of a leek. Steam these until tender.

Mix chook flesh with steamed vegetables. Add salt and pepper to taste as well as at least 1/2 a cup of double cream and enough reduced chicken stock to bind things together - you want a loose but not a runny mixture. You will learn to feel your way along with this bit. Think pie filling and you'll know what I mean.

Spread mixture in the base of a ceramic gratin dish. You can pop the whole thing in the fridge at this stage, a  'make ahead' shortcut I rather like, a sheet of cling wrap smooshed right on top of the filling (a skin on anything other than a gratin dauphinoise make me gag). Top with a sheet of puff pastry you've cut to fit the dish. Make it pretty with leaves, etc, cut from the remaining pastry. Go all out here; I use Careme because it is, without doubt, the most luxurious (and puffy and buttery). Brush pastry with a beaten egg and bake at 180C for about 30 minutes - pastry should be puffed and deeply golden.

Super-nice with peas tossed in lemon and butter (thank you, Nigel Slater, for that genius idea).    

 

         

planning

Christmas day lunch: last year's feast will be, ber-sactly, this year's. Smoked salmon with zucchini fritters, cashew sour cream and tomato chilli jam. Then a big chicken pie. Then a nice lie down, I should think. Just the two of us, everything laid out on a on a rug beneath the oak. 

p.s. you people are so nice. i slept last night. whoot!

 

 

pickling

Conversation, Salvation Army-bought jars in arm, in the carpark at Woodend on Friday afternoon:

"You picklin' things too, love?"

"Yep. Runner beans - if there's enough - and another batch of tomato-chilli jam. You?"

"Yeah, everyone loves me pickled shallots. Makin' more today." 

He tipped his hat to me and opened the door of his ute, and, as an afterthought, turned back for a moment. "Me own shallots, that is. That I grew."

He didn't need to offer that up, but I am super-glad he did.  

Have I told you how much I love life right now? The sunflowers are over - yanked out, composted, kaput - but there's still some of their high-summer cheer about.     

jam tarts

Look. People always love pastry, but let me tell you this. People will love you, much, much more if you make the pastry yourself. Shortcrust is easy, and I reckon that being able to make the stuff by hand is an excellent skill to have in the kitchen, one worth acquiring for the way it makes people feel about you if nothing else.

Two things: butter must be fridge-cold, and, more importantly, the less you touch it all the better. Cold cold cold.

Rub 40z of  butter and 6oz of flour together in a big bowl. Do so quickly, as Tamasin Day-Lewis says, "as though the butter and flour are hot sand". She is right on - it's exactly the action you need. When it looks like chunky breadcrumbs, add a tablespoon of iced water (with cubes from the freezer). Mix with a spoon. Add more water, but more water equals shrinkage so less, obviously, is more. Do it s-l-o-w-l-y. Do it carefully. Things should be just coming together. Make into a ball, cover and refrigerate for 30 mins. Good for tarts both big and small.

To make jam tarts preheat your oven to 180 C, putting a tray in to heat up at the same time. Roll out the pastry*. Butter a muffin/cupcake/gem-scone tin. Cut circles of pastry using the rim of tumbler or whatever will allow a generous overhang on your chosen tin. Dollop heaped teaspoons of jam into the hollows. Tamasin suggests raspberry or apricot are best and she, whose idea this is in the first place, is, yet again, right on. When the oven's ready, put the tarts in on top of the tray and bake for about 15-20 minutes. They are gorgeous.

*rolling pastry out in an even shape can be a tricky job. Delia describes the action perfectly (point 8 - scroll down). Patience, as with most things, is key, and that quarter turn stuff really does work. These days I look upon it as a little moment to enjoy using my hands, free from typing and such. Pastry, like bread, is a bit like craft.

marmalade

been making marmalade. tamasin day-lewis is your woman here, and even if all the bossy, pop-it-in-the-warming-oven-of-your-aga stuff irritates, forge on regardless. i used navel oranges, so sub whatever citrus you like; it is the best marmalade i've ever tasted, let alone made. feel like a genius.

the recipe on the telegraph's web page is as it is written in her bible but with one notable exception: in print she implores you to "not fall at the last hurdle" with the final 30 minute wait. it's key, i swear.

Jelly

Crabapple jelly.

Again. I like those satisfying cooking rituals.

Really just solidly set pink sugar, but good to have around nonetheless. We managed to get through all of last year's stash quite quickly to my surprise, so there's more this time. I skimmed constantly - this is key - and it behaved beautifully, setting to a nice wibble-wobble.

Mum gave me an idea while she was here. She 's been making a very plain apple jelly that she then uses as a kind of jam stock, added, in large tablespoon's-worth I imagine, to low-pectin jams as they simmer. This batch is full of pectin and the idea's intriguing, I reckon.

Keeping some back just to test the theory.   

Raspberry season

Two $5 punnets of biodynamic - yep, I said, biodynamic - raspberries, grown in the so-close-to-Melbourne-that-it's-practically-a-suburb Yarra Valley came home a few weeks ago. Unbelievably good. With raspberry season well underway, think it's high time I shared a little summer raspberry love. 

It's uncomplicated; hardly what you'd even call a recipe. Which is good. The less reading during food prep the better, I say. Leaves more time for loading up the Pentax. Just the way I like things, these days. 

 

Raspberry sauce

Based on a recipe in Tamasin Day-Lewis' (not-quite...it's a bit too idiosyncratic to be deemed Biblical...but nonetheless extremely useful...) Kitchen Bible for Uncooked Raspberry Jam. Kinda untrue as there is a tiny bit of cooking involved, but it's not of the boiling, foaming kind. Halting myself from swiping a slow finger through each time I passed the bowl proved tricky. I will add that Rapadura sugar - evaporated cane sugar - is seriously good here, but ordinary caster sugar will behave perfectly well.

Weigh your raspberries. Measure 1/2 of that weight in sugar. If your raspberries are tart, add more by all means. Oscar licked the spoon for a full 2 minutes, so clearly teenagers and adults like it less sweet, though younger ones may not. Only you will know.

Pour the sugar into an ovenproof bowl and add the fruit to another. Warm the oven to a moderate heat - 150 C is perfect, no pre-heating required - and pop both bowls in for 20 minutes. Remove, scrape the sugar into the fruit and stir for 10 minutes, slow as you like, but constantly. Rest for 10 minutes and do it all over again. Cool, avoiding the urge to strain. The goo around the seeds is the best bit.

Ideas on what to do with it, to come.