A Book of Mediterranean Food

by Unknown

  Cenci are good to serve with a cold sweet, mousse, ice-cream, etc.

  ½ lb flour, 1 oz butter, 1 oz castor sugar, 2 eggs, few drops cognac, pinch of salt, grated lemon peel.

  Make a rather stiff paste with all the ingredients. Work it well with the hands and then leave it to rest for a little wrapped in a floured cloth. Take a small piece at a time, and roll out very thin, like paper. Cut into shapes – bows, crescents, plaits, or diamonds, etc. Make an incision in each biscuit with a knife. Dip them into a pan of hot fat, turn immediately and then take them out. When they are cool sprinkle them with castor sugar.

  This quantity makes a very large number. Half quantities would be enough for 6 people.

  YOGHOURT

  Throughout the Balkans and the Middle East yoghourt, or yaourti, is served as a sweet, or as a sauce (as for the pilaff on p. 98), in salad (p. 156); it is eaten for breakfast or at any meal, and is refreshing and light in a hot climate. Try it with brown sugar and hot stewed fruit. Dried apricots are particularly good, fresh damsons, apple purée, blackcurrant purée, quince or bitter orange marmalade.

  ORANGE AND ALMOND CAKE

  The juice of 3 oranges, grated rind of 1 orange, 4 oz ground almonds, 2 oz fine breadcrumbs, 4 oz sugar, 4 eggs, ½ teaspoon salt, cream, orange-flower water.

  Mix together the breadcrumbs, orange juice and grated orange rind, add the ground almonds, and if available, a tablespoon of orange-flower water.

  Beat the egg yolks with the sugar and salt until almost white. Add to the first mixture. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Pour into a square cake tin, buttered and sprinkled with breadcrumbs, and bake in a moderate oven (Regulo 4) for about 40 minutes.

  When cold turn the cake out and cover the top with whipped cream (about ¼ pint). Very good and light, and excellent for a sweet at luncheon or dinner.

  COFFEE MOUSSE

  ½ pint milk, 2 eggs, 2 oz sugar, 3 leaves gelatine (rather under ½ oz), 1 after-dinner coffeecupful of very strong, unsweetened black coffee, ¼ pint double cream.

  Make a thin custard of the milk and yolks of eggs previously thoroughly whisked with the sugar. Strain and leave to cool.

  Put the gelatine leaves cut into small pieces into the prepared coffee in a small pan or a cup, and place this in or over hot water. Stir until the gelatine has dissolved. Leave to cool and strain into the custard.

  Whip the cream lightly, amalgamate with the custard. When this mixture is quite cold and just barely beginning to set round the edges fold in the stiffly whisked whites. Turn into a small soufflé dish (¾-pint size) or into small cups or glasses.

  Enough for 4.

  CHOCOLATE CREAM MOUSSE

  To use up 4 egg whites break 2 oz of bitter chocolate into a fireproof dish or bowl. Add 2 tablespoons black coffee, heat 3 or 4 minutes in low oven. Have the egg whites ready whisked into peaks. Beat chocolate-coffee mixture to a smooth paste, stir in a saltspoonful of powdered cinnamon. Pour the beaten whites on to the chocolate, fold the two together, lifting and turning the mixture. Add ¼ pint lightly whipped cream and a pinch of salt. Turn into glasses or small cups and chill in the refrigerator. Makes 4 or 5 helpings.

  CRÈME À L’ORANGE

  5 oranges, 1 lemon, 4 oz white sugar, the yolks of 4 eggs, a little orange liqueur (cointreau, Grand Marnier or orange curaçao) or sweet dessert wine.

  Put the strained juice (there should be approximately a half pint) of the oranges and the lemon together in a saucepan with the well-whisked yolks and the sugar. Heat gently, stirring constantly, as for a sauce or custard. The mixture takes some time to thicken, and is ready when it starts to adhere to the sides of the pan, although it never thickens sufficiently to coat the spoon. Take the pan from the heat and stir the cream until it is cool. By this time it will have thickened perceptibly.

  Pour the cream into 4 custard cups or glasses, and leave them overnight in the refrigerator. Do not attempt to turn these creams out or to decorate them with whipped cream. They are intended to be just sufficiently set to be eaten with a spoon and should be accompanied by sponge fingers, soft honey cake, or almond biscuits.

  PEARS BAKED IN WINE

  A method of making the most intractable of cooking pears very delicious. It is especially suitable for those households where there is a solid-fuel cooker.

  Peel the pears, leaving the stalks on. Put them in a tall fireproof pot, or earthenware crock. Add about 3 oz of sugar per pound of pears. Half cover with red table wine, or sweet dessert wine. Fill to the top with water. Bake in a very slow oven for anything between 5 and 7 hours, or even all night, until the pears are quite tender.

  These pears, deep rich-red or amber gold by the time they are cooked, are served cold in their remaining juice (it can be thickened to a syrup by a few minutes’ fast boiling) with cream or creamed rice separately. For an even more festive and decorative effect the pears can be stuck all over, when cold, with slivers of blanched almonds.

  SLICED AND SUGARED ORANGES

  One of the charms of restaurants in Italy is the way a waiter will come to your table, spear an orange on the end of a fork, and in a wink it is peeled, and cleanly, elegantly sliced on to your plate, no juice wasted and never a trace of pith or pip. It is an entertaining and skilful professional trick, fascinating to watch, and difficult to imitate. So I prepare my sliced oranges – a sweet dish which I find never fails to please, year in year out whatever the season, by an easier method.

  Using a very sharp knife, preferably saw-edged:

  (1) Halve the orange horizontally, then divide each half into 4 sections.

  (2) Flick out pips, slice off any pith on the outer edge of the section.

  (3) Slice the pulp cleanly from the skin straight into a bowl, leaving behind every trace of pith (you have to be a bit wasteful to make these sliced oranges successfully).

  (4) Sprinkle the prepared oranges with white sugar, and finally serve them, chilled, in deep wine glasses. According to size of the oranges, allow 1, 1½, or 2 per person, and, if you like, pour a table-spoon of kirsch or cointreau into each glass just before the meal, or perhaps a little lemon juice and a sprinkling of freshly chopped mint leaves; or for a change, and at seasons when oranges are not at their best, pour ordinary red table wine or a little dessert wine such as Cyprus Commanderia over the oranges.

  QUINCE AND ORANGE SALAD

  Mix sliced oranges with a few quarters of stewed sliced quinces (see recipe on p. 171) and serve in wine goblets.

  PEACHES IN WINE

  Yellow-fleshed Italian or French peaches are best for this dish.

  Allow a minimum of one large peach per person. If the fruit is at all hard or unripe immerse them for a minute or so in boiling water. Extract one at a time and remove the skin. Slice the fruit, preferably into clear glass goblets, one for each person, or, if you are making the dish for a large party, into a deepish fruit bowl or old-fashioned glass or porcelain compote dish on a pedestal stand. Strew the sliced peaches with a liberal amount of castor sugar and lemon juice. Then, as short a time as possible before the peaches are to be eaten, pour over them enough ordinary red table wine to reach just level with the top of the fruit.

  A sweetish white wine such as a Monbazillac from south-western France or one of the muscat dessert wines of Provence, Spain, or Italy can be used as an alternative to the red table wine which is more common in French household usage.

  FRESH FIGS WITH ORANGE JUICE

  Allow two firm, very slightly under-ripe purple or green figs per person. Cut the stalks from the figs but do not peel them. Quarter them, put them in a bowl, and over them pour the juice, freshly squeezed, of one large orange for eight figs. No sugar is necessary, but the fruit should be prepared an hour or so before it is to be eaten.

  Presented in a perfectly plain white china salad bowl, or in individual clear glass wine goblets, this fig salad is one of the most beautiful as well as one of the most exquisite of all fresh-fruit dishes.

  MELON AND MUSCAT GRAPES

&nbs
p; Green-fleshed, yellow-skinned honeydew melons are best for this mixture. Cut the melon in quarters, discard seeds and rind. Slice the flesh into cubes. Put these into a bowl, squeeze lemon juice over them, strew them with sugar. Add a handful of peeled and seeded muscat grapes – or, when they are available, the tiny little white currant grapes imported from Greece or Cyprus, which are eaten skin and all, and need only be stripped from the stalks and washed before they are added to the fruit salad.

  QUINCE COMPOTE

  Peel, slice, and core 2 lb of ripe quinces. Keep the cores and peel, and with them make a syrup by cooking them in ½ pint of water and 6 to 8 oz of sugar for about 30 minutes.

  Strain the syrup, and in it cook the sliced quinces, very slowly, until they are quite soft and can be pierced easily with a skewer.

  Serve hot or cold, with thin pouring cream, or with unsalted cream cheese or yoghourt.

  Slices of quince prepared as for compote are delicious mixed with sliced, butter-fried dessert apples, and in apple-tarts and pies.

  HONEY AND WALNUT CREAM

  A Provençal honey recipe.

  Pound or chop finely 3 oz walnuts, shelled weight. Mix with them 2 tablespoons of thick aromatic honey (our own heather or clover honey for example) and 2 tablespoons of thick cream.

  Spread between thin buttered slices of fresh brown bread, this mixture makes exquisite little sandwiches for tea, or to serve instead of wafers or biscuits with a lemon or apricot ice-cream.

  This amount makes about a dozen little sandwiches – but the mixture keeps a long time in a covered jar, so it can be made in larger quantities.

  Jams and Preserves

  Corfu: Making the Preserves

  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

  ‘Now that the robola* is safely on the way, the Count can turn his attention to the kitchens with their gleaming copper ware and dungeon-like ovens. Here he busies himself with Caroline and Mrs Zarian in the manufacture of mustalevria – that delicious Ionian sweet or jelly which is made by boiling fresh must to half its bulk with semolina and a little spice. The paste is left to cool on plates and stuck with almonds; and the whole either eaten fresh or cut up in slices and put away in the great store cupboard.

  ‘Sykopita, Zarian’s favourite fig cake, will come later when the autumn figs are literally bursting open with their own ripeness. But for the time being there are conserves of all kinds to be made – orange-flower preserve and morella syrup. While the Count produces for the table a very highly spiced quince cheese, black and sticky, but very good.’

  Prospero’s Cell

  by Lawrence Durrell

  POIRES À L’AIGRE-DOUX

  Make a syrup with 1¾ pints of white wine vinegar, 2 lb sugar, peel of half a lemon, cinnamon. Cook in the syrup 6 to 8 lb of small peeled pears. Pour into a basin, cover and leave a week. Strain, put the fruit into bottles, reheat the syrup and pour it boiling on to the fruit. Cool before covering.

  PLUMS À L’AIGRE-DOUX

  Ripe but fine plums. Wipe and prick with needle. Make a syrup as for poires à l’aigre-doux, adding cloves and nutmeg instead of lemon, put them into the boiling syrup. Take each one out as soon as the skin is lightly broken. Strain them in a sieve, add the juice to the syrup, reboil it and pour on to the fruit in pots.

  MELON À L’AIGRE-DOUX

  Good for serving with a cold chicken or ham.

  Peel a 3-lb melon, throw away the seeds, cut in pieces the size of a nut. Blanch 2 minutes in boiling salted water. Strain. Put in cold water, re-strain. Cook 2 minutes in 8 oz boiling vinegar. Put into a basin, keep in a cool place for 48 hours. Strain. Cook the vinegar with 1 lb of sugar and a few cloves. After boiling 15 minutes add the melon. Boil 3 minutes. Pour into a basin. The next day put in pots and cover.

  SPANISH QUINCE PASTE

  Wash the quinces but do not peel them. Quarter them and remove the seeds. Steam them until quite soft, and put through a sieve or food mill. Weigh the resulting pulp and add the equivalent weight in sugar. Cook in a heavy pan and stir frequently until the paste starts to candy and come away from the sides of the pan.

  Turn into square or round tins about ¾ inch deep. Leave to cool. The paste should be left to dry in the sun for several days, but the drying process can be achieved by putting it into a warm oven which has been turned out after the joint has cooked, or into the plate drawer of an electric cooker, or in the cool oven of an Aga cooker. The process need not all be carried out at once, but can be done for an hour or two at a time when it is convenient.

  The paste can either be stored in the tins or wrapped in grease-proof paper.

  Serve the paste cut into squares, as a dessert, with the coffee.

  STUFFED DATES GLACÉ

  Remove the stones from 10 oz of dates. Stuff them with the following mixture: 3 oz of ground almonds, mixed with a little hot syrup made with sugar and water. To this add icing sugar until the paste is firm. Stuff the dates with this mixture, and dip in syrup, made as follows:

  For the syrup: 7 oz sugar to half a glass of water and a few drops of lemon juice. Cook without stirring, dip a spoon in cold water and then in the syrup, then in water again; if it is covered with a layer like glass, the syrup is ready. With a hatpin take each date and dip in the sugar and with a knife dipped in water put each on an oiled plate. When they are dry put them into little paper cases.

  Prunes can be treated in exactly the same way.

  PEACH JAM

  8 lb peaches, 8 lb sugar, 2 glasses water.

  Peel the peaches, break in halves, extract the stones, put the fruit into a preserving pan with the sugar and water. Cook quickly. When the peaches become transparent the jam is done.

  PRESERVED MIXED FRUIT

  Into good white vinegar pour approximately twice the quantity of sugar making an acid syrup. Leave this for some days. Into it put the fruit,* ripe and dry. At the end of 6 or 7 months, they will be ready. Keep in a cool place in earthenware jars, not too cold or hot.

  RAISINÉ DE BOURGOGNE WITH PEARS

  Put 4 or 5 lb of ripe grapes through a sieve and reduce the juice obtained by half, taking care it does not stick. Peel some ripe pears, cut in quarters and put them into the juice and reduce another third. The pears will then be cooked.

  QUINCE PRESERVE

  Peel and cut the quinces (large ones) in four pieces; carefully core and cut out all the hard inside. Now make a note of their weight. Lay them in a saucepan, cover with cold water containing a handful of salt (1½ to 2 oz). Boil quickly till soft (for about 10 minutes), then drain quickly. Take the peels and cores and pips, cover with cold water, boil well and strain. Pour this juice into a basin and add an equal quantity of sugar. Pour this mixture over the quinces, arranged in a preserving pan, now add more sugar, equal to the original weight of the prepared quinces. Simmer gently till the pieces are quite clear, and the juice forms a thick syrup when cold.

  TO PRESERVE FRESH TOMATOES

  Choose ripe tomatoes, medium size, absolutely whole, perfect, and without the slightest crack or bruise. If the tomato has a hole where the stalk is, drop a little wax on it. Roll the tomatoes in a clean cloth and dry well.

  Put them carefully into jars with a large mouth, fill the jars with nut oil (buile d’arachide) without taste so that the tomatoes are covered with a layer of oil an inch deep. On the oil pour a layer of eau-de-vie (to prevent the oil from going rancid) half an inch deep. Seal hermetically.

  The oil can be used afterwards as it will remain quite tasteless.

  STUFFED WALNUTS IN SYRUP

  This is one of the traditional recipes of Cyprus kindly obtained for me by Mr Sigmund Pollitzer, of Kyrenia.

  50 fresh green walnuts, 50 almonds, roasted in their skins, 50 cloves, 6 tumblers of water, 4½ lb of sugar.

  Skin the walnuts, as delicately as possible, and put them in a bowl of water; leave them to soak for a week, changing the water every day. Make a small incision in each walnut, into which you put an almond and a clove (the cloves are optional
, depending on your taste).

  Make a syrup of the sugar and the water, and leave it to cool, then put in the walnuts, bring them to the boil, and simmer for about 20 minutes. Leave them to cool in the syrup, and the next day boil them again for another 20 minutes.

  When they aré cool put them into preserving jars. They are delicious.

  Sauces

  The Good Cook

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  ‘All culinary tasks should be performed with reverential love, don’t you think so? To say that a cook must possess the requisite outfit of culinary skill and temperament – that is hardly more than saying that a soldier must appear in uniform. You can have a bad soldier in uniform. The true cook must have not only those externals, but a large dose of general worldly experience. He is the perfect blend, the only perfect blend, of artist and philosopher. He knows his worth: he holds in his palm the happiness of mankind, the welfare of generations yet unborn…. If she drinks a little, why, it is all to the good. It shows that she is fully equipped on the other side of her dual nature. It proves that she possesses the prime requisite of the artist; sensitiveness and a capacity for enthusiasm. Indeed, I often doubt whether you will ever derive well-flavoured victuals from the atelier of an individual who honestly despises or fears – it is the same thing – the choicest gift of God.’

  South Wind

  by Norman Douglas

  The first four sauces in this chapter have, strictly speaking, little to do with Mediterranean cooking, but they are classics of the French kitchen, and it is important to know how to make them. Anyone who has mastered the principles of cooking these sauces, and of a mayonnaise, should be able to produce almost any sauce without difficulty, and will be able to improvise to suit themselves.

  SAUCE ESPAGNOLE

  Sauce espagnole, being the basic brown sauce from which many others derive, was usually made in considerable quantity, and kept for several days. This being no longer practical, I give the quantities for making about 1 pint.