How to Eat

by Nigella Lawson

  For the sauce, put the tahini in a bowl and add the garlic and salt. Stir with a wooden spoon, adding the lemon juice as you do; it will seize up here, but don’t worry because it will loosen later. Slowly add some water (I find I can use about ½ cup), pouring from a measuring cup so that only a little goes in at a time, and keep stirring. When you have a smooth mixture the consistency of heavy cream, stop adding water. Put into a bowl with a spoon and sprinkle with the additional ground cumin.

  I like a plateful of lemony spinach with this—if you’re buying it frozen, which I do, make sure it’s leaf, not chopped, spinach—and a tomato salad. If you want a carbohydrate, then bulghur wheat (see page 102) would be just right.

  PASSION FRUIT FOOL

  The fragrant astringency of passion fruit is just right after the palate-thickening stickiness of the tahini. This recipe comes from British TV cook Stephen Saunders’ Short Cuts and is so good that I haven’t even downsized it from his specifications, which are for six; just use this to fill 4 glasses instead, and your guests will thank you.

  12 passion fruit

  1 cup heavy cream

  1 cup confectioners’ sugar

  juice of 1 lemon

  2 teaspoons Cointreau

  Cut the passion fruit in half, scoop out the pulp with a spoon, and leave it in a bowl. Semi-whisk the cream in a large bowl and leave it in the fridge. Put 4 glasses in the fridge too, though it won’t hurt if they’re not chilled. Sift the sugar and set aside.

  Then, when you want to eat dessert, whisk the sugar into the cream with the lemon juice and Cointreau. Fold in the passion fruit and pour the fool into the glasses. Serve with whatever cookies you like.

  ROAST COD WITH PEA PURÉE

  QUICKLY SCALED MONT BLANC

  The peas are actually a speeded-up, simplified version of the garlic-breathy puréed pea crostini on page 301. If the quantities given seem to specify a lot, it’s because people eat a lot of it. Though be grateful if you’ve got some left over; it makes lovely pea soup.

  If you’re getting the cod from your fish seller, ask for it to be cut from the top end.

  ROAST COD WITH PEA PURéE

  cloves from 1 head garlic, unpeeled

  5½ cups frozen young peas

  8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter

  4 tablespoons crème fraîche or

  heavy cream

  1–2 tablespoons olive oil

  1 tablespoon flour

  salt and freshly milled pepper

  4 cod fillets (about 8 ounces each)

  Put the garlic in a large saucepan of cold water, bring to boil, salt, and then boil for 10 minutes. Fish out the cloves with a slotted spoon, push them out of their skins back into the water, and bring back to the boil. Add the peas and cook for slightly longer than you would if you were eating them normally. Drain, then tip into a food processor, add the butter, and process. Add the cream and process again. If you’ve done all this when you get in, scrape back into the saucepan so you can reheat as and when you want it.

  Now for the cod. Preheat the oven to 400°F. Get hold of a frying pan that will go in the oven later; otherwise, use whatever frying pan you have and transfer the fish you cook in it later to a baking sheet. Whichever, pour the oil into the pan, put it on the stove, and, while it’s heating up, put the flour on a plate, add salt and pepper, and dredge the cod fillets in it. Sear the cod fillets on each side, then transfer to the oven and bake until just cooked through, 7–10 minutes, depending on how thick they are and how cold they were before you started. Serve the juicy white fish alongside the vivid green nubbly purée.

  QUICKLY SCALED MONT BLANC

  My mother often made this most basic version of the traditional Italian chestnut dessert called Mont Blanc. It’s just sweetened chestnut purée (from a can) scraped into a bowl and some whipped heavy cream piled on top; you can add crumbled bought meringues, grated chocolate as you like, and whisk a tablespoon each of rum and confectioners’ sugar into the cream. If you can add some actual marrons glacés, too, so much the better. This is so gloopy it’s easier to do it in individual glasses, even if it’s not my usual style.

  NEW POTATOES

  It’s hard to cook potatoes in under half an hour, but if you get those teeny-weeny miniature new potatoes you should keep within schedule. Or take more time but no more effort by putting 6 baking potatoes in the oven for 1–1½ hours (it all depends, of course, on your having that much time to play with), then scraping out the fleshy interior into a bowl. Warm up some milk and a huge amount of butter (I put both in a measuring cup in the microwave) and fork into the potatoes with salt, pepper, and freshly grated nutmeg.

  SAUSAGE AND MASHED POTATOES

  You can do very easy “sausages and mash,” that simple and hearty British comfort dish, by putting some sausages in an oiled pan during the last 50 minutes of the potatoes baking. Both worth remembering for those evenings you do get back a couple of hours before you want to eat, but without the energy to do anything in those two hours.

  The pea purée, while we’re dealing with variations on a theme, goes just as rhapsodically well with noisettes of lamb (see page 174, only add some rosemary needles to the marinade in place of the onion).

  DUCK WITH ORANGE SALSA

  NOODLES WITH SCALLIONS, SHIITAKE MUSHROOMS, AND SNOW PEAS

  ICE CREAM WITH STEM GINGER OR FIGS

  Shrimp cocktail, coq au vin, duck à l’orange—there has been in the recent past an insistent, cool-minded movement to bring these disparaged specialities of the 1960s and 1970s back into culinary fashion. I have nothing against this in principle; if it tastes good, eat it. Fashionableness—ironic or otherwise—should not count against a food any more than its unfashionableness. The pairing of duck and orange can work (see page 166 also), and work quickly. A coriander-spiked citrussy salsa—an intensely flavored, swiftly-put-together relish—is a perfect foil for the sweet and rich flesh of the soy-sprinkled duck breasts. If available, blood oranges look spectacular in this, but they tend to be hard to peel and chop. If you’re in a hurry, choose a seedless, neatly peeling navel orange or substitute a papaya, though in which case don’t bother about using the mint but do give a squeeze of orange along with the lime. Noodles are just right with this and, as usual, you can boil them when you get in and finish them off later.

  DUCK WITH ORANGE SALSA

  You may find it easier to use a grapefruit knife, if you own one, to dismantle the oranges for this; in which case, halve each unpeeled orange and use the knife to cut around the rim and through each segment, as you would if preparing a grapefruit. Cut each chiselled-out segment into two or three pieces and then, after you’ve done all of them, squeeze the juice from the hollowed-out orange halves over the diced flesh. (Another option follows in the recipe.) Also, I think it is better to use rubber gloves when working with the chili here, however unhygienic they may be. Otherwise your hands will infuse everything with burning heat for the rest of the evening.

  4 boneless duck breast halves with skin (about 8 ounces each)

  soy sauce

  2 oranges, preferably seedless, peeled and pith removed (or see headnote)

  ½ medium red onion, minced

  1 red chili, halved lengthwise, seeded and minced

  3–4 tablespoons finely chopped coriander

  1–2 tablespoons finely chopped mint

  salt

  ½ lime

  Preheat the oven to 450°F.

  Slash the skin of the breasts diagonally, about 4 times on each, then sprinkle with soy sauce and rub this over the skin with your hand. Arrange on a rack in a baking dish, skin side up. Cook for about 20 minutes, though do look after 15 minutes; the skin should be crisp, the flesh pinkly tender.

  Meanwhile, if not using a grapefruit knife to dismantle them, slice the peeled, pithless oranges crossways and then chop each slice into small chunks. In an ideal world, you might want to remove the membranes between each segment, but I don’t. Stir the chili into the oranges, along
with the coriander and mint. Sprinkle with salt and squeeze over the lime gradually and tasting as you do; you want the salsa to be sharp but not painfully so. Stir gently together and put aside until needed. Standing around for 15 minutes or so will do it no harm—indeed, on the contrary. To serve, either plonk the breasts, skin side up, on a plate, or cut each breast into diagonal slices about ¼ inch thick and lay them on said plate. Put the salsa in a bowl and serve alongside the duck for people to to help themselves.

  NOODLES WITH SCALLIONS, SHIITAKE MUSHROOMS, AND SNOW PEAS

  Just as you can boil the noodles in good time—in other words, when you can still enjoy the privacy of your own kitchen—so you can chop all the bits to go in them. I know stir-frying can tax a girl’s nerves, but this is serenely manageable.

  8 ounces egg noodles

  2 tablespoons vegetable oil

  1 teaspoon sesame oil

  4 red chilis, seeded and chopped

  6 scallions (white and green parts), sliced into ½-inch lengths

  8 ounces shiitake mushrooms, stemmed and chopped

  4 ounces snow peas, halved or cut in thirds

  2 tablespoons soy sauce

  3–4 tablespoons chopped coriander

  Boil the noodles in salted water according to the instructions on the package, then drain, rinse in cold water, and drain again. Heat the oils in a hot wok or large frying pan and stir-fry the chilis and scallions for 1 minute; add the mushrooms and stir-fry for another 2 minutes. Then add, stirring furiously, the snow peas. Give them a minute, then add the noodles, lifting them up in the pan and stirring well so all is mixed in together, pouring in the soy as you do so. Toss well and quickly, then empty onto a big round plate. Sprinkle with the coriander.

  ICE CREAM WITH STEM GINGER OR FIGS

  All you need to do for dessert—following one of the suggestions in the hasty-improvisations section earlier—is put a container of good vanilla ice cream and a jar of stem ginger in syrup on the table. Canned figs—the stuff of sweet trolleys in provincial British hotels, maybe—would also be just, delightfully, right after the zingily salsa’d duck.

  MACKEREL IN CIDER

  BUTTERED APPLES

  Obviously, you can simply grill your mackerel—all you need then is a squeeze of lemon or orange juice over (a Seville orange if in season), and nothing could be better. Fish, especially oily fish, is always good when plain grilled. When I want to eat properly but in a hurry, I lunch on grilled trout, herring, or mackerel fillets with pickled ginger and soy sauce. The reason I might want to cook fish in a way that might seem a little more elaborate is that cooking in the oven I find easy when I have people over.

  Mackerel poached or steamed in cider, or sometimes cider vinegar, with a sauce that may or may not contain mustard, is a fairly common way of eating in Normandy and Brittany; this version happens to be reassuringly pared down. It helps, too, that mackerel (like trout) is easily bought. Obviously, the cider intended is the French hard cider, made in the area. But don’t lose sleep over finding some. Use any hard cider you can get your hands on or a mixture of half apple juice and half lager beer. Have potatoes or cabbage with caraway with this, and apples for dessert, too. The cider with the fish, and the apples after, do not cloy or bore; somehow the flavors seem to deepen rather than tire with the repetition.

  MACKEREL IN CIDER

  I know that the idea of cream, and quite so much of it, added to sauce that is to swathe such oily fish might sound alarming. But when you’re cooking quickly, something’s got to give, and I find most often that something is the contemporary concern about cream and butter. Adding either or both of these is a way of adding instant depth, texture, and accomplished finish to a dish. But if you want to add less, then I’m not stopping you.

  6 skinless mackerel fillets (about

  8 ounces each)

  3 shallots or 1 small onion, minced

  1 cup hard cider, or ½ cup each apple juice and lager beer

  salt and freshly milled black pepper

  ½ cup crème fraîche or heavy cream

  lemon juice (optional)

  1–2 tablespoons chopped parsley

  Preheat the oven to 400°F.

  Put the fillets in a lightly buttered, shallow baking dish. Sprinkle with the shallots and pour over the cider. Season with salt and pepper and cover tightly with foil. Bake for 20–25 minutes, until the fish is cooked through. Transfer the mackerel to a warm serving plate and cover to keep warm.

  Pour the cooking liquid into a small saucepan and boil, reducing by about half. Add the crème fraîche and simmer with the heat low for a couple of minutes. Season to taste, adding lemon juice if you want.

  Strain the sauce, pressing with the back of a spoon to extract all the liquid. Garnish the fish with parsley and serve with the cider sauce.

  With this I can think of nothing better than plain boiled potatoes and spinach with a fragrant cocoa-brown dusting of freshly grated nutmeg. But frankly, you can put all your effort into the boiled potatoes (I think peeled large floury ones are more comforting here than the ready-washed and thin-skinned waxy ones, though I am prepared to accept them as an alternative) and then just make a quick salad with watercress and thinly sliced bulb fennel. This is the perfect foil to the pungent creaminess of the fish and sauce. A small amount of grainy mustard in the salad’s dressing will work well. I love my mother’s cabbage with caraway here, too. Shred half a large white cabbage, either by hand or in the processor (using the slicing disc). Melt 2 tablespoons or so butter and 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a large, deep frying pan or wok. Scatter in 1 tablespoonful of caraway seeds, then toss the cabbage in. Keep stirring and tossing over high heat till the cabbage has wilted and shrunk a little (a couple of minutes or so) and then throw in about 1 cup of hot stock (I use half a vegetable bouillon cube in some boiling water) and toss, then clamp on a lid. In another couple of minutes or thereabouts, remove the lid, let bubble away for another minute, and then serve. If you want to add more butter or more caraway seeds at this stage, do; anyway, sprinkle salt and grind pepper over generously.

  BUTTERED APPLES

  Fry 3–4 Gravensteins, peeled, cored, and cut into eighths, in about 4 tablespoons butter until brown on each side. Sprinkle thickly with superfine sugar until that too browns and then pile onto a plate and serve with ice cream or cream (or add the cream to the juices in the pan and make a sauce that way). Ben and Jerry’s Rainforest Crunch ice cream is delicious with these buttery, caramelly apples.

  CHAMBÉRY TROUT

  SALSA VERDE

  GUSSIED-UP ICE CREAM

  With the herby, vermouth-poached trout serve a salsa verde, which is the perfect foil for the fish and an excellent idea for the quick cook anyway, as all you need to do is to put everything in a food processor and turn it on. The salsa verde is good with poached chicken breasts, too (see page 165).

  With either the fish or the chicken, I’d go for some fava beans, which are perfect with the salsa verde—being, I suppose, an Italianate version of fava beans with parsley sauce that I ate often as a child. Otherwise go for lentils, canned if need be, with bacon lardons or strips or cubes of pancetta stirred into them. But remember that the bacon is salty and the salsa verde is salty and that canned lentils tend to be salty, so go easy. That’s why pancetta, if you can get it, is a better choice. For dessert—ice cream slightly gussied up.

  CHAMBÉRY TROUT

  This is another easy way of cooking fish without touching it while you do so. I keep a bottle of Chambéry or Noilly Prat vermouth in the kitchen at all times, primarily because I am not much of a drinker and don’t necessarily want to open a bottle of wine when I need just a little for something I’m cooking. Of course, if you’ve got friends coming for dinner, you might want to drink white wine with the fish, so obviously use some of that rather than the Chambéry if you prefer. In which case, use 1 cup wine, dispensing with the water.

  Save the fish-poaching liquid for the salsa, which follows.

  4 trout
(1–1¼ pounds each) cleaned, with the heads left on

  salt and freshly milled black pepper

  2/3 cup Chambéry or other white dry vermouth

  Preheat the oven to 400°F.

  Grease a baking dish—I use an old enamel one I have that measures about 8 × 12 inches—and then put the cleaned and seasoned trout in it. Pour over the Chambéry mixed with ¼ cup water, cover loosely with foil, making sure the foil doesn’t touch the fish, and bake for about 20 minutes. When the fish is ready, the flesh should be beginning to be flaky and have lost its translucency. It’s probably better to take the fish out before you think it is absolutely à point, as you can just let it stand, still covered, and to one side, for a few minutes, in which time it will continue to cook gently, which is the best way.

  SALSA VERDE

  I first had salsa verde when I was a chambermaid in Florence. I was there with a school friend and we used to go, most evenings, to a trattoria called Benvenuto and eat tortellini in brodo, their penne al modo nostro, which involved an intensely garlicky tomato sauce, then moussy-sweet fegato—calves’ liver—or, my favorite, tongue with salsa verde. Now I wonder how good the restaurant was, but then, when most of the time we were living on a bottle of wine, a loaf of bread, and a kilo of tomatoes between us a day, it seemed like heaven. Anyway, after a while we came back mostly for the clientèle, made up in significant part by the local community of transsexuals and transvestites. The most beautiful of all of them, and the one generally held to be the glorious and burnished figurehead, the presiding force and icon, was a Bardot-esque blonde, only more muscular, known as La Principessa; those less appreciative of her aesthetic construction referred to her simply as La Romana. I felt I’d arrived when she huskily called out “Ciao bella” to me across the street one day.