Even I cannot live by roast chicken alone, so I move on. I love duck for weekend lunch, if only because it is made to pick at as you sit around the not-cleared table, lazily finishing up whatever remains. There are drawbacks: it is not easy to carve and it doesn’t go very far. Keep it, then, for when there are just four of you, along with a child or two, as well. The recipe I use makes the carving point less pertinent; you can almost treat it like crispy Peking duck. What you can carve, carve, and as for the rest, pull it into soft strips and gloriously crispy shreds.
With duck, how can you not have peas? Some will want also plain potatoes, to offer a foil to the rich and unctuous meat.
Don’t go berserk over dessert. Yes, a sharp and fragrant fruit tart would be lovely (and my Seville orange curd tart—see page 246—is an obvious contender here, evoking as it does another traditional culinary conjunction with the duck), but just as good, certainly easier, perhaps even more judicious dessert, would be a heaped mound of tropical fruit salad. Get papaya, get mango, some headily perfumed melon, and, just for the look (there’s certainly no taste), slice some star fruit into the bowl, too. The juice of the fruit (cut them over the bowl so you don’t lose any) should provide some liquid, which you can supplement with squirts of lime juice and the pulp of a couple of passion fruits. And although it might sound excessive—well, it is excessive—I serve with it a pitcher of warm, even hot, butterscotch sauce. You may not believe me before tasting it, but this is an ecstatically successful culinary combination.
RELATIVELY EASY LUNCH FOR 4
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SOFT AND CRISP ROAST DUCK
PETITS POIS À LA FRANçAISE AND POTATOES
TROPICAL FRUIT SALAD WITH BUTTERSCOTCH SAUCE
The reason why this is relatively easy, if not just plain simple, is that quite a bit of it can be done in advance. The ducks can be poached in advance, and then all you need to do is roast them. The peas can certainly be done slightly in advance. The fruit must definitely be bought quite a bit in advance. Nearly all fruit is sold before it is anywhere near ripe these days, so unless you’re very confident, I wouldn’t consider buying fruit to eat on the weekend any later than Wednesday. And you probably don’t need me to say this, but don’t keep the fruit in the fridge.
The recipe for the duck is on page 89; for 4 adults, you will need 2 ducks (and that’ll provide enough for a few smallish children, too, who love this) and the recipe for the peas is on page 105. For just four, you need to think of using about 2 pounds of unshelled peas or about 2 cups of frozen young peas.
QUICK STOVETOP BUTTERSCOTCH SAUCE
To make a quick stovetop butterscotch-toffee-ish sauce for the tropical fruit, melt 3 tablespoons light muscovado or light brown sugar, 2 tablespoons superfine or granulated sugar, 4 tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter, and ½ cup golden syrup or light corn syrup together in a heavy-bottomed pan. When smooth and melted, let it bubble away, gently but insistently, for 5 minutes or so. Then, off the heat, beat in ½ cup light cream and ¼–½ teaspoon best-quality vanilla extract. (Or maybe add instead a slug of rum.) You can pour the sauce into a pitcher or bowl with a ladle and serve hot, or you can do it in advance and reheat.
MINT, ORANGE, AND RED CURRANT JELLY
Respectful though I am in general of tradition, I don’t like English-style roast lamb. Nostalgia makes me forgiving of red currant jelly or mint sauce, but neither is my first choice. You could consider an amalgam of mint and red currant, which works better than either sauce on its own. Decant your jar of bought good red currant jelly, grate over the zest of ½–1 orange, and add 1 heaping tablespoon (or more, if when you taste it you feel it could do with it) chopped mint. I use my mother’s rusted-up old Moulinex herb mill; I hold it over the bowl of jelly and just turn the handle till I think I’ve got enough. Hold one of the orange halves over the bowl and give it a squeeze. Stir everything together and, if you made a mess, decant the jelly into a clean bowl for serving.
Lamb is best, I think, when the sweetness of the meat itself is in relief, rather than rudely overtaken by a less subtle sugariness. This means serving it warm rather than hot and, if eating it cold, at room rather than at fridge temperature. The smoky sweetness of peppers is perfect here; they complement rather than compete with the lamb’s almost musky meatiness. Most people give you leg of lamb, but you should try shoulder—the flavor is deeper, more rounded, and the texture is fat-irrigated and plumply velvety. I am an awful carver and end up hacking an unboned shoulder into oblivion; a boned shoulder solves the problem.
LATE-SUMMER LUNCH FOR 6
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ROAST SHOULDER OF LAMB WITH RATATOUILLE
GREEN SALAD WITH GREEN BEANS
TRANSLUCENT APPLE TART
I’ve called this a late-summer lunch because this is when it is eaten at its best—the air still warm, the wind beginning to bluster limply; it may be a late, weak August, it may be early September. But, hell, you could eat it anytime, even in the depths of winter. Mostly, I hate too much Mediterranean sprightliness when the weather is shoulder-stoopingly brutal, but the soft stewiness of ratatouille (or at least, that’s the way I like it) accommodates itself elegantly enough to an alien climate.
The recipe for ratatouille is on page 102.
ROAST SHOULDER OF LAMB
3 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
leaves from 1 sprig rosemary, minced
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 4-pound boned shoulder of lamb
coarse sea salt
Preheat the oven to 425°F.
Put the garlic and rosemary in a bowl with the olive oil and stir and mash together. Get a sharp knife and stab the lamb in several places. Using your fingers, push small amounts of the garlic mixture into the cavities and, if there is any left in the bowl, thin it out with a little more olive oil and coat the top of the lamb with it. Sprinkle with the salt and roast for 30 minutes per pound plus 20 minutes, or to an internal temperature of 130°F, for pink meat. Then let stand for a good 10 minutes before carving.
If you’re in a hurry, you can stud the lamb just with garlic, in which case cut the garlic lengthways into thin slivers and push them into the cavities. And you could, if you wanted, smear the top with a spoonful of good pesto. I’m not mad about the cheese element, but I have been reduced to this, and it works, which is why I pass it on.
If you want a gravy, just remove as much of the fat as you can, put the pan on the stove, and add a glass of red wine. Taste to see whether salt or water is needed. You don’t need to make much gravy, just enough to drizzle over the carved slices of meat, not so much as to provide a puddle on the plate.
GREEN SALAD WITH GREEN BEANS
You’ve already got the sweet soft mush of the ratatouille; what you want here is something crisp and fresh and plain. I’d stick to the paler lettuces—one soft Bibb or Boston lettuce and a romaine heart or two, the leaves just separated, not torn into chunks. Get about 4 ounces green beans, trim the ends, and halve them so you have a pile of short lengths and cook them in salted boiling water until they’re tender-crisp, about 5 minutes. You want them to have bite, but not too much; green beans are horrible undercooked. While they’re cooking, fill the sink with cold water and chuck in a few ice cubes. As soon as the beans are tender-crisp (start tasting after 5 minutes), drain them and then plunge them into the sink of icy water. Drain again and dry, either on a paper towel or in a salad spinner, toss with the lettuces, adding some tender little basil leaves, whole, or some chopped fresh parsley or the tiniest grating of lemon zest. Make the simplest dressing of olive oil, salt, and lemon juice or vinegar (using hardly any lemon or vinegar and even less if you’ve grated in some zest) and maybe a dot of mustard, if you like.
TRANSLUCENT APPLE TART
I came across this tart one Sunday lunch at the house of friends. When I arrived the pastry was being made; in the brief pause between first and second helpings of the main course the apple was grated relaxedly into the butter mixture, and then, at the end,
we ate it. And it reminded me how nice it is to see food being prepared rather than just being presented with the finished product. The lack of anxiety in the cooking inevitably transferred itself, and that’s a salutary lesson. The recipe is adapted from Jane Grigson’s comforting and instructive Fruit Book. She, in fact, calls it Apple Cheese Cake or Apple Curd Tart, but she makes the comparison between this and the old-fashioned southern American specialty called transparent pie, in which the custardy filling made with melted butter in place of cream or milk becomes translucent as it cooks. The word translucent evokes the light and melting delicacy of this tart, and I can’t help finding the idea of cheese and curd a distraction. The only drawback for me is that it needs only one apple, thereby hardly relieving me of the reproachful mound of cooking apples in my garden in August and September.
I find it easier to get the pastry made, rested, and rolled out, and the tart shell lined, the evening before. Pâte sucrée, Jane Grigson stipulates, but I use my foolproof sweet pastry dough (page 39) instead. I have made this with bought puff pastry and it’s still good; I should think bought pie crust would do as well. But you must believe me when I tell you how easy my pastry is. You are not baking this blind, so once the pastry is in its pan, you can proceed to fill and bake it.
1 recipe plain pastry dough (page 37)
4 tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter
1/3 cup vanilla sugar or superfine sugar
1 egg
few drops pure vanilla extract, if not using vanilla sugar
1 cooking apple
Preheat the oven to 425°F.
Prepare the pastry and line a 9-inch tart pan with it. Melt the butter and sugar together over such a low heat that they become no more than tepid. Remove from the stove and beat in the egg and vanilla extract, if using. Quickly peel, core, and grate the apple coarsely, and stir thoroughly into the butter mixture.
Pour and spread over the pastry-lined pan and bake for about 15 minutes, until golden brown. Lower the heat to 350°F and cook for a further 15–20 minutes, until nicely colored.
As with most desserts, it is best to time this to come out of the oven not long before you’re sitting down; it will be warm but will have had time to settle. But this, as Jane Grigson says, is wonderful whether hot, warm, or cold.
FRANCO-AMERICAN LUNCH FOR 6
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GIGOT BOULANGÈRE
SLICED GREEN BEANS OR GREEN SALAD
SUMMER SLUMP
I’ve mentioned that I like lamb as cooked by the French, and a gigot boulangère is particularly glorious, both dignified and comforting.
After the garlicky lamb, do something simple. If you want it to be a “made” dessert rather than plain fruit or ice cream, then I’d go for a slump, which is a fabulous, homey dessert (as is grunt, which has a synonymous application) of fruit baked with little dumplings on top. This is easy and suits late summer, when fruit’s around, though you can use frozen.
GIGOT BOULANGèRE
Shoulder, not leg, of lamb baked over potatoes is probably the origin of this dish; the shoulder would have been boned and so, really, should the leg. But don’t worry about it, nor about making this historically authentic. We no longer take the roasting pan or casserole over to the baker’s to cook in his oven (hence the name), so we can liberate ourselves from the other connotations of the dish without going into a frenzy of culinary self-doubt. Elizabeth David specifies new potatoes to go underneath the roast, and feel free to do likewise. The French certainly eat waxier potatoes than we do. I specify floury potatoes simply because that’s the way I have always eaten this.
1 whole bone-in leg of lamb, about 7 pounds, hip bone removed (have your butcher do this)
3 garlic cloves, peeled, slivered lengthwise, and the slivers halved
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, plus more for greasing the pan, softened
3 bay leaves
2–3 shallots, halved, or 1 large onion, quartered
6 or 7 sprigs fresh thyme or 1 teaspoon dried
3½ pounds floury potatoes
salt and freshly milled black pepper
1 cup lamb stock or water
Preheat the oven to 400°F.
Stab the lamb in several places with the point of a sharp knife and insert the garlic slivers. Cut a quarter of the butter off and put it to one side.
Crumble the bay leaves and put them and the shallots in a food processor. Reserving a couple of sprigs, hold the rest of the thyme over the bowl and, squeezing each stem by turn, pull downwards so that the leaves fall into the bowl. Pulse until everything is chopped finely. Naturally, you can do this by hand if you prefer.
Butter a deep roasting pan large enough to take all the potatoes and the lamb; an ordinary high-sided one will do, and indeed is what I use. Peel the potatoes and slice them thinly but not transparently so, blanch them for 2–3 minutes in boiling salted water; drain, dry, and layer them on the bottom of the dish, dotting with the larger quantity of butter and seasoning with the salt, pepper, and the onion mixture as you go.
Pour the stock over the potatoes, put in the oven, and bake for 30 minutes before adding the lamb.
Rub the top of the lamb with the rest of the butter and the leaves from the remaining sprigs of thyme. Sit the lamb on top of the potatoes and roast for 1 hour, then raise the heat to 450°F and cook for another 30 minutes or to an internal temperature of 130°F. This should give you pink but not underdone meat, but test after about 1¼ hours to see if it’s how you like it.
Let the meat rest in the turned-off oven with the door open for about 15 minutes before serving. Even though it doesn’t look as lovely, remove the lamb to a board to carve it. You can always put the slices back on top of the potatoes in the pan before you serve it.
SUMMER SLUMP
Note that the fruit layer in this is quite liquid—most like a fruit soup. If you haven’t got fresh fruit to make it, use frozen red berries (not strawberries) and avoid framboise or a fraise liqueur. Make the dough for the dumplings ahead, if you like, and hold it in the fridge.
To make enough slump for 6, then (though it would stretch to 8—it’s just that I hate stretching), you need:
FOR THE FRUIT
2¼ pounds fruits, such as raspberries, blackberries, cherries (stoned), or blueberries, any combination, fresh or frozen
½ cup sugar, plus more, if needed
4–5 tablespoons water or suitable liqueur, such as crème de cassis or an orange liqueur
FOR THE DUMPLINGS
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
pinch salt
2 tablespoons superfine sugar
2 tablespoons ground almonds
6 tablespoons (¾ stick) unsalted butter, chilled and cut into small dice
milk to bind
Preheat the oven to 375°F. Put the fruit in a baking dish—I use one of those oval old-fashioned cream stoneware bowls, but any pie or baking dish that has a capacity of about 10 cups should do. Sprinkle the fruit with the sugar; taste and add more if you think it’s needed. Add the water or suitable liqueur and put, covered (with lid or foil), in the oven.
Meanwhile, get on with the dumplings. Sift the flour and baking powder into a bowl, add the salt, the sugar, and the almonds (almond dumplings are not usual, but I prefer them here). Stir them together and then throw in the butter and rub into the dry ingredients until the mixture is crumbly. You could do this in a free-standing electric mixer, but I wouldn’t try a processor.
Pour in enough milk—about 2 tablespoons—to bind the dough; it should be soft but not too sticky to form into balls the size of small walnuts (remember, they will swell while cooking and then they should grow up into the size of proper walnuts). This quantity of dough should make about 24 little dumplings. Take the fruit out of the oven when it’s simmering—15–35 minutes, depending on whether the fruit is fresh or frozen. Take off the lid, stir the fruit, and taste for sweetness, adding more sugar if necessary. Put the dump
lings in the dish, cover again, and bake for another 15–20 minutes, by which time the dumplings should be cooked, beautifully swollen and no longer doughy. I like this with ice cream, but cream, old-fashioned runny cream rather than those stiff restauranty mounds, can be just right, too.
BLACK-BERRIES AND CREAM
If you want something plainer, or rather even less trouble, just get masses of blackberries, cover a vast plate with them, and do nothing save sprinkle them with superfine sugar. Pour a great deal of heavy cream into a pitcher and put it on the table alongside.
This was never going to be a comprehensive list of suggestions, but I am loath to move on without mentioning one more traditional—and this time British traditional—way with lamb, and that’s with caper sauce.
Caper sauce in fact goes, or always went, with boiled leg of mutton. But no one eats mutton any more. It’s extravagant to boil lamb. It would be awful, though, if caper sauce disappeared, so just make it to go with plain roast lamb instead.
The best way to get some lamb stock to flavor the caper sauce is to roast lamb for 15 minutes in a very high oven, turn it down to 400°F, and add about 2 cups of water and an onion, halved, to the dish. I’ve got one of those roasters that is made of a punctured dish over a deeper pan and I put the lamb on the rack and the water and onion in the pan below. Don’t cover the lamb; you want the top to crisp. (For cooking times, check table on page xviii.) Otherwise just buy a tub of chicken stock for the sauce.
For a richer sauce, stir in, at the end, an egg yolk beaten gently with about 5 tablespoons heavy cream.
CAPER SAUCE FOR ROAST LAMB
Make this sauce while the lamb is resting prior to carving. If you’ve braise-roasted the lamb as mooted above, try to remove as much fat as you can from the roasting pan. I am hopeless at it, so what I suggest is that you pour the juices into a measuring cup and mop the top, where the fat is, with some paper towels. If you find those gravy dividers effective, use one of them, but I find that they’re made so big that the top of the liquid—let alone the unfatty part below—never even reaches the spout. Pour about 1 cup of the juices into the milk required and warm.
How to Eat Page 37
