1½ tablespoons unsalted butter
1½ tablespoons Italian 00 or all-purpose flour
1 cup milk
salt and freshly milled white or black pepper
whole nutmeg
Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan and then stir in the flour, cooking for 2–3 minutes until you have a walnut (sized and colored) paste. Meanwhile, heat the milk (I do this in a measuring cup in the microwave—very moderne) and take the pan with the roux off the heat. Gradually, using a whisk, beat the warm milk into it. Proceed slowly and cautiously to avoid lumps. Keep stirring and adding, adding and stirring, and when all the milk is smoothly incorporated, season with salt, pepper, and a grating of the nutmeg. If it does go lumpy, blitz it in your blender or with a hand-held equivalent.
Return to the heat and cook, at a lowish simmer, stirring all the time, for about 5 minutes (at least twice that if you’re using ordinary all-purpose flour) until the sauce has thickened and has no taste of flouriness. Add some more nutmeg before using. And if you want to make your béchamel in advance, you can stop a skin forming by pouring a thin layer of milk or melted butter on top. Makes about 1 cup.
If you want a more intensely flavored sauce, heat 1 cup of milk first with 1 onion, ½ white part of a leek, sliced, or some sliced scallion whites, and 2 bay leaves or some mace (or whatever flavor it is you wish to intensify). Let it infuse, lid on, off the heat for 20 minutes or so before proceeding with the sauce.
CHEESE SAUCE
To make cheese sauce, add a pinch of English mustard powder or cayenne along with the flour and about ½–1 cup (depending on how you want to use your cheese sauce) grated cheddar or Gruyère, or half Gruyère, half Parmesan, at the end.
PARSLEY SAUCE
For parsley sauce—heavenly with cooked ham or to blanket fava beans—just infuse the milk with the stalks from a decent bunch of parsley. Then blanch the parsley leaves (although I have to say I don’t always bother), dry them thoroughly, chop them finely, and add them when stirring in the milk, sprinkling over a little more parsley at the end. And you can chop up leftover ham and mix it with the cold sauce, together with some dry mashed potatoes and possibly chopped gherkins or capers, to make parsley and ham patties. I sometimes add 1 egg yolk and 2–3 tablespoons heavy cream to make a more voluptuous parsley sauce—especially good with poached smoked fish and mashed potato. (And you can make patties out of these, too.)
PARSLEY AND HAM PATTIES
This is the way I make béchamel sauce most of the time. My mother’s method was the same as above, except she put a little nut of a chicken bouillon cube—a quarter to a third of a cube—in the pan along with the butter and flour and made roux of them all together. This makes a good savory sauce; the stock isn’t very pronounced, it just gives a more flavorful saltiness. So make really sure you don’t season without thinking.
MY MOTHER’S WHITE SAUCE
I use this method to make a white sauce to coat leeks or onions, using half milk and half the water the onions or leeks have been cooking in. Sometimes, even better, I use half light cream and half the vegetable cooking water. If no cream’s available, I beat in an extra nut of butter at the end.
VEGETABLE SOUP
A vegetable soup doesn’t really require a recipe, and I certainly don’t want to suggest you get out your measuring cups to make it with mechanical accuracy. But it’s helpful to have a working model for a plain but infinitely variable soup. This one is not exactly the mix of carrot, parsnip, and turnip my mother used to make, and which we knew as nip soup, but is based on its memory.
I use vegetable bouillon cubes to make the stock for this most of the time, but if I’ve got some good organic vegetables for the soup that taste properly and vigorously of themselves, I use water. A friend of mine swears that if you use Evian or other bottled still water it makes all the difference, but I haven’t quite got round to that yet.
There are two ways to go about preparing the vegetables for this. For a chunkier soup, chop them roughly (with the exception of the leek, which is sliced), as I indicate below, or put the whole lot in a food processor and pulse it briefly until chopped medium-fine. This will give you a soup with a finer texture. If it’s a smooth, velvety texture you’re after, follow the directions about puréeing the soup.
Although my hand is pretty well permanently stuck, culinarily speaking, around the neck of a bottle of Marsala, I admit that there isn’t a vegetable soup in the land that doesn’t benefit from the addition of a little dry sherry.
3 tablespoons olive oil, or 3 tablespoons butter and a drop of oil
1 medium onion, roughly chopped
2 medium carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
1 turnip, peeled and roughly chopped
1 parsnip, peeled and roughly chopped
1 floury potato, peeled and roughly chopped
1 celery stalk, roughly chopped
1 medium leek, white part only, sliced thickly
salt
4 cups vegetable stock
1 bouquet garni (see page xx)
freshly milled black pepper
whole nutmeg (optional)
1–2 tablespoons dry sherry
2–3 tablespoons fresh parsley, chives, or chervil, for serving
Heat the oil, or butter with its drop of oil, in a large, wide saucepan (one which has a lid, preferably) and then add the chopped vegetables and the leek to it, turning all over a few times so they all have a slight slick of fat. Sprinkle with salt, cover, and, on a low heat, let them half-fry, half-braise until softened, 10–15 minutes, shaking the pan from time to time and occasionally opening the lid to stir (making sure nothing’s sticking or burning at the bottom) before putting the lid back on again. Pour in the stock, adding the bouquet garni and a good grind of pepper, and bring, uncovered, to a simmer, then cook for 20–40 minutes (exactly how long depends on the age of the vegetables, the size you’ve chopped them, the dimensions of the pan, and the material of which the pan’s made).
Serve as is or, for a finer texture, blend or process the cooked soup or push it through a food mill. Alternatively, if you’ve got one of those stick blenders, you can do an agreeably rough purée in the saucepan. Sometimes I take out a couple of ladlefuls, blend or process them, and put them back into the soup to thicken it without turning it all to mush. Season to taste with salt and pepper and, optionally, a bit of grated nutmeg at the end, and stir in the sherry before serving, sprinkling over fresh herbs as you wish. Serves 4–6.
BREAD CRUMBS
These are a regular and very ordinary kitchen requirement, but because we are all out of the habit of using up leftovers, few of us are clear on how to go about making that misnomer, fresh bread crumbs. I say misnomer, because you really want them stale.
I don’t bother with drying out bread in the oven. I just take the crusts off some slices of stale-ish (but not bone dry) good white bread, cut the bread into chunks, and lacerate them into crumbs in the processor. I then leave the crumbs in a shallow bowl or spread them out on a plate to dry and get staler naturally. If you want to make the sort of bread crumbs that you can buy, those very dry, very small crumbs that could coat, say, a scaloppina Milanese, then just leave the bread till it’s utterly dried out and cardboardy beyond belief before blitzing it in the processor. You can keep breadcrumbs in a freezer bag in the freezer and use them straight from frozen. I reckon an average slice of good bread, without crusts, weighs about an ounce; this in turn yields approximately 6 tablespoons bread crumbs.
VINAIGRETTE
* * *
One of the holdovers of the hostess-trolley age is the idea that the clever cook has a secret vinaigrette recipe that can transform the dullest lettuce into a Sensational Salad. I’m not sure I even have a regular vinaigrette recipe, let alone one with a winning, magic ingredient. But we all panic in the kitchen from time to time, so here is a useful, broad-brush reminder of desirable proportions for various dressings.
PLAIN SALAD DRESSING
/> I sometimes think the best way of dressing salad is to use just oil and lemon juice. The trick is to use the best possible olive oil—and as little of it as possible—and toss it far longer than you’d believe possible. Use your hands for this. Start off with 1 tablespoon of oil for a whole bowl of lettuce and keep tossing, adding more oil only when you are convinced the leaves need it. When all the leaves are barely covered with the thinnest film of oil, sprinkle over a scant ½ teaspoon sea salt. Toss again. Then squeeze over some lemon juice. Give a final fillip, then taste and adjust as necessary. Instead of lemon juice, you can substitute wine vinegar (and I use red wine vinegar rather than white, generally), but be sparing. Just as the perfect martini, it was always said, was made merely by tilting the vermouth bottle in the direction of the gin, so when making the perfect dressing you should merely point the cork of the vinegar bottle toward the oil.
As important is the composition of the salad itself. Keep it simple: there’s a green salad, which is green; or there’s a red salad, of tomatoes (and maybe onions). First-course salads may be granted a little extra leeway—the addition of something warm and sautéed—but I would never let a tomato find its way into anything leafy. For more detailed explanations (genetic as much as aesthetic) of this prejudice, please see page 197. When you’re using those already mixed packets of designer leaves, you should add one crunchy lettuce like romaine, which you buy, radically and separately, as a lettuce and then tear up yourself at the last minute. Herbs—parsley, chives, chervil, lovage—are a good idea in a green salad (and you can add them either to the salad or the dressing) but, except on certain rare occasions, I think garlic is better left out.
BASIC FRENCH DRESSING
If you want to change oils for this, use part walnut or hazelnut oil, part olive oil. Don’t replace the olive oil totally. Just a tablespoon of the nut oil plus olive oil should achieve the variation in flavor that you are after. If you want to change vinegars, do so uninhibitedly, but taste first to check the level of acidity and adjust the other components correspondingly.
scant ½ teaspoon Dijon mustard (optional)
2 teaspoons red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon sea salt
good grinding black pepper
6–8 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
If you’re using the mustard (and I sometimes use a tarragon mustard—feltily green and lightly, rather than effusively, fragrant—and sometimes none at all), mix it in a bowl with the vinegar, the salt and pepper, and a drop or two of cold water, then whisk or fork in the oil (I often use Ligurian, which is sweet and mild). Or you can put all the ingredients for the dressing in an old jam jar, screw on the lid, and shake.
Put most—but not all—of your salad leaves in your salad bowl and add the dressing. Toss. Taste. If you find you have sloshed on too much dressing, add the spare leaves and toss again.
CAKES
* * *
We no longer live in a world where baking a cake is considered a basic skill. That, one could argue, is reason enough to include a recipe here. And I don’t mean a fancy cake, but just a plain, ordinary sponge.
VICTORIA SPONGE
A traditional Victoria sponge is made in two halves that are sandwiched together with jam or crushed fresh raspberries and cream (and don’t forget to sprinkle the top of the cake with superfine sugar later).
I make this cake in the processor. Realizing you can make a cake without all that creaming first is a revelation. Without the beating, however, you don’t get all that air into it, so you have to add some extra baking powder. I don’t always sift the flour, but I probably ought to. I have found that the addition of cornstarch gives the cake an almost feathery lightness. The butter must be very, very soft or it won’t all blend together. I always use organic eggs.
1½ cups all-purpose flour
¼ cup cornstarch
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons superfine sugar
16 tablespoons (2 sticks) very soft unsalted butter
2 teaspoons baking powder
1½ teaspoons vanilla extract or zest of ½ lemon or orange
4 eggs
2 tablespoons milk
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter two 8-inch round cake pans.
Put all the ingredients, except the milk, into the processor and process to mix. Check that everything has mixed all right, and then process some more while pouring the milk through the funnel. You want a batter of a soft, dropping consistency. Add more milk if necessary. Pour into the buttered pans and bake in the oven for about 25 minutes. When ready, the tops should spring back when pressed and a cake tester or fine skewer should come out clean.
Let the cakes stand in their pans for a minute or so and then turn onto a wire rack to cool. Sandwich together with cream, jam, raspberries, or whatever you like.
Obviously, you can make the cake the oldfangled way. Cream the butter and sugar till pale and soft, then add the eggs, alternating each egg with 1 tablespoon or so of the flour, cornstarch, and baking powder, sifted together. When the eggs are beaten in, add the milk and vanilla, then fold in the rest of the flour mixture.
You can also make the sponge in a single 8-inch layer. Halve all the ingredients except the vanilla—use 1 teaspoon—and keep the full amount of zest, if you’re adding it. You’ll have to make this the traditional way; there’s too little batter for a processor to do the job properly.
BIRTHDAY CAKE
It’s wise to have in your repertoire a pretty fail-safe chocolate cake. I call this birthday cake because that’s what it seems to get made for mostly. It’s plain but good, and the chocolate ganache with which it’s draped is gleamingly spectacular and ideal for bearing birthday candles. With this recipe, you don’t need to be dextrous or artistic—and any other form of icing for a birthday cake requires you to be both. But if you want to make the sort of cake you actually write Happy Birthday on, make a Victoria sponge and look at the children’s party food on page 450 for additional ideas.
So many chocolate cakes now are luscious, rich, and resolutely uncakey—rather like my chocolate pudding cake with raspberries on page 316—that I feel nostalgically drawn to this solid offering. And—this is the best bit—it is ridiculously easy to make. No creaming or beating or whisking. Stirring is about the extent of it. I know condensed milk looks like a spooky ingredient, but trust me.
A note on the chocolate: I like to make the cake with bittersweet chocolate (average 60 percent cocoa solids in best-quality brands) but the ganache with a mixture of bittersweet and milk chocolate. The light chocolate I use is Valrhona Lacte (which I think has about 35 percent cocoa solids), but most supermarkets sell a good-quality continental chocolate, which is comparable. As to what proportions to use, that really is up to you. I change them depending on who’s eating the cake, but it’s likely to be half dark, half milk, or sometimes two-thirds dark to one-third milk.
FOR THE CAKE
1¾ cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup best-quality unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
pinch salt
1 cup superfine sugar
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter
2/3 cup evaporated milk
3½ ounces best-quality bittersweet chocolate, broken into small pieces
2 eggs, beaten
FOR THE CHOCOLATE GANACHE
8 ounces best-quality bittersweet and milk chocolates (see above)
1 cup heavy cream
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Put the kettle on. Butter an 8-inch springform cake pan (or two 8-inch round cake pans) and line the base with baking parchment. This last is not crucial if you’re using nonstick pans, but even so, it removes all worries about turning out the cake later.
Sift the flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt together into a large bowl and set aside.
Put the sugar, butter, evaporated milk, ½ cup just-boiled water, and the chocolate in a saucepan and heat until melted and smooth. Then, using a wooden spoon, stir this robustly but not
excitedly into the flour mixture and, when all is glossily amalgamated, beat in the eggs.
Pour into the springform pan and bake for 35–45 minutes, less if you’re using the shallower cake pans. When it’s ready, the top will feel firm. Don’t expect a skewer to come out clean; indeed, you wouldn’t want it to. And don’t worry about any cracking on the surface; the ganache will cover it later.
Leave the cake to cool in the pan for 10 minutes and then turn out onto a rack.
When completely cool, split in half horizontally; if this sort of thing spooks you, you should certainly use 2 cake pans and stick the 2 layers together—though remember, even if the cake breaks while you divide it, you can stick it together with the ganache.
To make the ganache, chop the chocolate (I put it in the processor until reduced to rubble) and put it in a medium-sized bowl, preferably a wide, shallow one rather than a deep basin shape. Heat the cream to boiling (but do not let it boil) and pour it over the chocolate. Leave for 5 minutes and then, by choice with an electric mixer, beat until combined, coolish, thickish, and glossy. You want it thin enough to pour but thick enough to stay put. At this stage, think of the ganache as somewhere between a sauce and an icing; later, it will set hard and Sacher-torte shiny. Pour some over the cut side of one half of the cake, using a metal spatula to spread, and then plank the other half of the cake on top. Pour the rest of the chocolate ganache over the top of the cake, letting it drape over, swirling this overspill with your spatula to coat the sides. Leave for a couple of hours or till set. You can make the cake the day before and then make the ganache the next morning before you set off for work. You can then get back in the evening to your gleaming masterpiece with nothing to do save puncture its flawlessly smooth surface with candleholders.
How to Eat Page 4
