Basil Risotto

It is high summer in Tuscany. The air is hot and still, and although we don’t yet have the washed out feel of August, already you can sense that people are trying to move around in the heat as little as possible. Town is quiet, right through until the sun goes down early in the evening, when all around there are the sounds of the place slowly coming to life once more…voices calling from balconies, the occasional noise from a passing Vespa, and the sound of RAI Uno on somebody’s distant TV…The perfect backdrop to a glass of chilled prosecco and a handful of roast hazelnuts, sitting beside the lily pond, and watching as the last rays of the sun catch the façade of the Palazzo Ruschi, just visible over the top of the garden wall.

At this time of year, the pots of Basil on the terrace are enormous, and in need of almost daily haircuts to keep them in order. A perfect time for this recipe, which calls for a generous cup or so of fresh Basil just before the final mantecare

For four.

Ingredients: 2oz Butter; 1 small Onion, peeled and chopped small; .one and a third cups of Carnaroli Rice; 2 pints of good Chicken Stock; 2 cups of fresh Basil leaves; 1 cup of grated Parmesan; Seasoning.

Method:

1. Heat the stock over medium heat, and add half a dozen Basil leaves to it; let steep for fifteen minutes or so, then remove the leaves.

2. Melt all but half an ounce of the Butter in a sauté pan and cook the chopped Onion over medium heat for five minutes or so until it is soft and translucent.

3. Add the Rice; stir to coat it thoroughly with melted Butter, and cook it over medium heat for a minute or so, then start to add the Stock, a ladleful at a time. Follow the general steps given in Risotto Techniques as you continue to add more Stock as each ladleful is absorbed by the Rice.

4. After twenty minutes or so, start to test the Rice for done-ness. It should certainly be ready by the time thirty minutes has gone by. As soon as you judge the Rice is about ready, quickly chop the remaining Basil leaves finely, then add them along with the grated Parmesan to the risotto and stir well.

5. Off the heat, add the remaining Butter and stir it in as it melts in the heat from the Rice. Add Salt and Pepper to taste, and serve.

Leftover Lamb....

This is a dish which is good enough to merit cooking the lamb anyway, even if you don't have any left over from a previous dinner. If you do have leftovers, though (or have planned ahead and made sure to cook more than you needed first time round) then with very little effort it is possible to produce a result which is surprisingly sophisticated, elegant and seriously delicious. I first came across this in a little country restaurant several miles outside Carcassonne in the middle of winter, about fifteen years ago, when we were taking the four-footed of the day to visit Barcelona. On that occasion the recipe gloried in the name 'Célestine d'Agneau', and I committed it to memory to re-create subsequently at home: flavour-filled packages of meat and tiny diced vegetables, neatly bundled inside a crêpe, served with a rich and delicious sauce. I've never come across it anywhere else, or really anything very close to it- although at a stretch I suppose you could think of italian agnolotti as a kind of first cousin...As with so many dishes, the success lies in the density of the flavours, and here it is important to retain as much as you can of the cooking juices from when the lamb was originally roast to use as a sauce just before serving.

Following a no-show at a dinner party earlier this week, I had a roast lamb shank left over, and this was the result for supper a couple of days later. Ten minutes to make the crêpes; the same amount of time to prep the mirepoix , and then elapsed time while it cooked down, when I could concentrate on other things. It's very quick and easy....

For two.

Ingredients: 1 lamb shank, roast, with its cooking juices; Crêpe batter made from 1 egg, 4 fl oz milk, 1.5 oz plain flour, and a pinch of Salt; 1 Leek; 2 medium Carrots, peeled; 2 Portobello Mushroom caps; 1 oz Butter (or Duck Fat, if you have it); 1/4 cup White Wine; Seasoning.

1. Set the oven to 180 degrees C.

2. Blend all the batter ingredients together, and make 4 x 9" crêpes (I never bother to let the batter rest, I don't see the point; this amount of batter will make more crèpes than you need, but it's difficult to reduce the quantities any further - I always refrigerate or freeze the surplus crêpes for future use). Cover them with clingilm once done, to prevent them from becoming leathery as they sit.

3. Melt the Butter or Fat in a large frying pan. Dice the Leek, Carrots and Mushrooms very finely to make a mirepoix, and sauté for about ten minutes or so. Once the vegetables have all satisfactorily collapsed, add the wine, raise the heat and reduce the liquid to nothing. Taste, and correct the seasoning.

4. Carefully scrape all of the lamb jellified cooking juices into a small pan, and then remove all of the meat from the shank and cut into approximately 1 cm pieces. Give the bone to the dog.

5. On a greased baking tray, put two metal serving rings, also greased - I use some which are about 2" tall, which are perfect for this. If you don't have appropriate rings, then large ramekins, greased, would probably work pretty well, too.
Into each ring, lay a crêpe so that it lines the ring and hangs over the sides, making it easy to fill it. In the base of each crêpe put a generous spoonful of mirepoix, followed by half of the diced lamb, then finish with the rest of the mirepoix. Fold the edges of the crêpe in and over the filling, to make a neat parcel.

6. Over the top of each Célestine put a square of aluminium foil, to stop it from drying out, and then put them into the pre-heated oven for about twenty minutes. Meanwhile, heat the reserved sauce in the small pan.

To serve, remove the foil and carefully invert the Célestines onto heated serving plates, and spoon the heated sauce over the top.

There's nothing new...

....under the sun. And certainly nothing new, it seems, in people vaccuously pontificating about how everybody else should organise their kitchens and their cooking arrangements. He may not have been Scots, or called Gordon, but it looks as though Messrs Brown and Ramsay were forestalled by 150 years or so by somebody called Charles Elmé Francatelli, who was laying down the law already in 1852 in a natty little tome he'd produced called ' A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes'. Taking as his starting point that 'every day it would be possible to feed a thousand families on the food which is wasted in London' - and where have we heard that, more recently? - Francatelli proceeded to explain the process of producing culinary delicacies such as Bubble & Squeak and broth made from Cow's feet - ok - as well as something called 'Sheep's Pluck' (sounds nasty) and a 'Pudding made from Small Birds', which to my tin ear just sounds uncomfortably crunchy.

We have to hope that Francatelli was more practical in the kitchen than he ever was as a would-be social reformer, since he appears to have blithely ignored both the literacy levels of his intended audience, as well as the inability of their purses to stretch to purchase of either the book or the ingredients! Actually, it may be that he wasn't in fact that much more practical in the kitchen as, although he is generally heralded as the 'Chef to Queen Victoria', he was only in royal employ for less than a year. Maybe he didn't match up to Albert's teutonic standards of efficiency - or maybe they just got fed up with picking the remnants of small birds out of their teeth, and stepping in discarded pieces of Sheeps Pluck on the Aubusson?

Should we be holding our breath for a 2008 updated version from the Heathcliff of modern politics, with all the wit and culinary wisdom likely to be found within its pages? What an appalling prospect - I certainly hope not!

Tonight's Dinner:

Cold Beef Salad, in Horseradish Cream.

Irish Sausages and Pak Choi.

Sorbet of Passionfruit & Banana.

Recipe: Vanilla Ice Cream...

Two thoughts struck me in the process of contemplating vanilla ice cream.

Firstly, that so much to do with cooking is about demystifying apparently complex techniques - sometimes because of splendid insights from others, and many times because you work out for yourself that actually a lot of what is published in recipe books is complete nonsense. So it was for me with roasting, and the discovery of Mrs Kafka......and with making pasta... and Gaston Le Notre and his techniques for puff and choux pastry....and so it is with the process of effortlessly producing rich and delicious ice cream.
When I first made ice cream, it seemed to be all about complicated temperature measurements at various different points along the way, and the absolute necessity to have a custard base of exactly the right 'coating consistency' , and it all seemed rather fraught and definitely unrelaxed. These days, I don't bother with any of that, and essentially just make an enriched Creme Anglaise to which I add whatever flavouring ingredient seems appropriate, let it cool sufficiently and then bung it into the pre-chilled machine and start the paddle working. Yesterday evening was a case in point: with some apple slices which had been sauteed in butter and an equal quantity of caramelised orange segments (both leftover from making Andalusian tarts the day before), I decided to make some Vanilla Ice Cream to have with them rather than just serving them with cream on its own. It took twenty minutes to make the custard base, whch I then left to cool on the windowsill as I turned the machine on to chill; the mixture went into the machine and started to churn just as we sat to the first course, and was exactly the right serving consistency at the moment when it was required...

And the other point? Well, it seems to me that vanilla has received an unjustifiably poor press over time, such that now it has come to be synonymous with 'plain' and 'pedestrian' and 'dull'. Why is that? Vanilla is a fantastically complex flavour...sensual and luscious and sophisticated and wonderful. A true food of the Gods, it is long overdue for rehabilitation...!

My preferred Vanilla IceCream Recipe:

Serves Four.

Ingredients: 250 ml Cream; 250 ml Milk; 1 Vanilla Pod, split; 50g Sugar; 6 Egg Yolks.

Method:

1. Combine the Milk and Cream in a double boiler or Zimmertopf; scrape the contents of the Vanilla Pod into the combine Milk and Cream, and simmer gently for ten minutes or so (I generally include the ppod itself at this stage, for added flavour, and remove it before adding the flavoured Milk/Cream to the Yolks and Sugar).

2. Meanwhile, whisk together Egg Yolks and Sugar, until the mixture is pale yellow and leaves a ribbon behind the whisk.

3. Add the simmered Milk/Cream to the beaten Yolks and Sugar, stri together thoroughly, and return to the double boiler. Simmer for a further five minutes or so, until it has thickened to a good velvety consistency (don't worry if it has some slight lumps in it - the paddle in the ice cream machine will sort those out).

4. Return the thickened custard to the bowl, cover with clingfilm and leave to cool down for half an hour or so; during this period, turn on the chiller element in the ice cream machine.

5. The longer you leave the custard to cool, the more quickly it will churn. Once you're happy that it is cool enough (half an hour is probably about the minimum length of time you can leave it) then pour it into the pre-chilled machine and start the paddle going.

As soon as it is ready, serve!

London Times....

Sunday morning, and a trip to see the Queen's botanical drawings that George III appears to have brought into the Royal Collection as the result of an ill-advised purchase at a garage sale sometime around 1762. Many of them almost psychadelic in appearance - presumably because he thought better of it as soon as he got them home, and they've spent much of the last 250 years still in their box - the display was diverse and impressive....in a way....but I'm afraid I couldn't really get onto the right wavelength to do them justice. Many were the work of a dutch lady artist, who seems to have devoted her life to painting the eighteenth century fruit and insect inhabitants of Surinam in vivid day-glo colours. It takes all sorts, I suppose....I confess to having been sneakingly more interested in watching the tents being erected in the back garden of the Palace, in readiness for this week's garden parties, at which the main botanical specimens in evidence will presumably have been Umbrellicus Giganticus along with Hattae Floribundiae (drowned Rattus) .

And drawings of deformed vegetables were followed by platefuls of the real things, as we tried out a new Dim Sum restaurant in Wilton Road for lunch. No great shakes, I'm afraid - the dim sum were bland and sticky, and everything else that followed tasted of coconut milk and little else. Mind you, I defy anywhere in London to rival CCK in Wardour Street for the general excellence of their Dim Sum - let alone the overall experience of the place - so it was hardly suprising that Wilton Road got a bit of a thumbs down. Amongst many others, an enduring memory of CCK was one occasion when we took a swiss friend there, and in the middle of his chatty explanation that even Indian food was a little exotic for his swiss palate, the lid was removed from the first dim sum basket set before him, and he was confronted by a tangle of large and eminently chewable duck's feet. He was so agitated at the sight that he lost the thread of his story and proceeded to spill a large glass of wine all down his front.....

Which I suppose takes me neatly onto the subject of wastage and the latest nanny-state nonsense to be handed down from Downing Street....since apparently we're now all deemed incapable of successfuly confronting the dual challenges of food shopping, and of managing the contents of our fridges. Mr Brown is instructing us to write shopping lists, and not to buy more than we need so that we don't up end having needlessly to throw half of it away!

How mind-bogglingly patronising can you get?

Who are all these witless cretins who apparently wander the aisles of supermarkets the length and breadth of the kingdom, fecklessly taking things from shelves, only subsequently to let them rot and moulder at home before being chucked into the outgoing rubbish? They certainly aren't to be found in any supermarket round here, where people can be seen pretty much 24/7 resolutely working their way down tightly written shopping lists, with military precision.
Wastage, Gordon, generally happens where large numbers of people are being fed at one time, and not within a domestic kitchen. I know; I've done it. Catering inevitably involves throwing away quite a lot of uneaten food....it's the sort of thing that happens in government canteens, and in preparing school dinners.....oh, and when you're knocking up an eight course banquet for a gathering of World Leaders.

How about putting your own house in order before you start telling the rest of us what to do with our's? (And what is it about pontificating Scots called Gordon, generally past their sell-by date, who have a tendency to lay down the law for everybody else.....there are rather too many of them about for comfort!)

Tonight's Dinner:

Scallop Mousseline with Watercress Sauce.

Lamb Shanks, double roast, with Roast Celeriac.

Andalusian Tarts, with Creme Chantilly.

Reductio ad perfection....

Delicious sauces are ridiculously simple to make. I know James Peterson writes at fascinating length on the subject, and I love the images he conjures up of egg-yolks and oils working together to make complicatedly-structured emulsions, for example .......but, away from the pages of his deathless prose, the actual practice in the kitchen is quick and easy and capable of completely transforming what might otherwise be a rather dull offering on the plate.

My approach to sauces is very straightforward: some 'cooking residue' (which can be either stock, or the bits left in the bottom of the roasting pan or the sauté pan - anything which has captured the flavour of whatever it was that was previously being cooked), some alcohol of choice (whatever you have to hand - I generally have port and vermouth ready to use in the kitchen in London, and marsala and house white in Italy, although you can also use a slug of whatever you're quaffing as Cook's Perk in the kitchen - and often , but not always, a slug of cream. That's the beauty of the process - the sauce can be adapted to whatever you happen to have available and might feel like including. Herbs? If you have them, why not? Cream? Yes, but not necessarily...

And the secret to success - if indeed it even merits being glorified as a 'secret' - is reducing and reducing and reducing the combined liquid until it is a dense, coating consistency in the bottom of the pan. It will cling perfectly to whatever it is that you're serving, and the flavours within it will be complicated and rich and delicious!

An example: last night we were having duck breasts for dinner. Before sitting down to the first course, I'd combined in a small saucepan a cup of beef stock, along with half a cup of port and a generous slug of cream, stirred together and left simmering gently on the stove. Having cleared the first course, I grilled the duck breasts (approx four minutes per side) and then moved them into an oven pre-heated to 220 degrees C; all the while the sauce was bubbling away, not quite boiling but simmering quite energetically, and required stirring perhaps once every couple of minutes. Five minutes or so in the oven, and the breasts were ready to come out and sit under foil for a couple of minutes so that the juices would go back into the meat and not flood out when it was carved; meanwhile, I raised the heat under the sauce and boiled it down stirring constantly, until a wooden spoon drawn through it on the base of the pan left a clear line, and the sauce was almost glutinous in texture. A quick check for seasoning and adjustment as needed* and then the breasts were carved and plated, and the sauce spooned over each serving - a spoonful of richly dense sauce per serving is quite sufficient.

Simple, and fantastic.....

*only ever add seasoning at the end when you're going to reduce a sauce in this way; if you put it in at the beginning, then as the liquid reduces, the seasoning becomes much stronger and more concentrated than you had in mind. It is also at this stage that you should add any chopped fresh herbs that you might want to use to add an extra flavour element to your sauce.

Tonight's Dinner:

Tagliatelle (fatta in casa) with a sauce of Tomato, Rosemary & Pancetta.

Salmon Fillet, in Walnut Cream sauce, on julienned Celery.

Fig & Quince Tarts.

Tiramisu

A lot of nonsense seems to have been written about this particular dish, and its exact provenance. Some will have you believe it can be traced back to Siena and a dinner in honour of Cosimo III, whilst others claim it is in fact a Zuppa Inglese (it isn't - they are completely different things) and thus shares the history of that dessert. Most credible to my way of thinking is the idea that in fact Tiramisu, as we know it, is a fairly recent invention and dates from Treviso sometime in the seventies.

When I was cooking professionally, I invariably used Carluccio's version, which includes kahlua and omits any whisking of either egg whites or cream. The result is unctuous and dense, and is well suited to an environment where food often needs to be physically quite robust. Looking further afield, Valentina Harris, La Hazan, and Alvaro Maccioni all include beaten egg-white, which lightens the end result, and Claudia Roden is quite disappointing, with her rather uninspired two-layer-only version. In trawling through the archive, I came across a venetian recipe, which included crystallised fruit within the cream layer (doesn't do much for me - crystallised fruit of any kind, I tend to avoid). And then I found the Pradelli version, quite different from all the others, as in fact he makes a zabaglione base, into which he then incorporates the beaten cream and mascarpone and egg-white. The end result is much lighter than the others, but without losing the dense quality that is fundamental to the quality of the dish. I recommend it...

For four generous servings.

Ingredients: 4 Eggs; half a cup of Sugar; 1 liqueur glass of Marsala; 1 liqueur glass of Rum; 100 ml Cream; 250 g Mascarpone; 2 teacups of Espresso; 25 or so Sponge Fingers; good quality Chocolate powder, for final garnish.

Method:

1. In a double boiler or zimmertopf, whisk together the egg yolks and sugar until the mixture is pale yellow and forms a ribbon behind the whisk. Over medium heat, continue stirring for four to five minutes, adding first the Marsala and then the Rum. At the end of this time, the mixture should be thoroughly homogenised and the velvety density of a custard. Remove from heat.

2. Whisk the Cream until thick, and then beat into this the Mascarpone. When thoroughly incorporated, fold in the zabaglione mixture. Beat the egg whites until stiff, and then carefully fold these also into the zabaglione-mascarpone mixture. Set aside while you make the biscuit base for the Tiramisu.

3. Take a shallow rectangular dish about 4" x 6" and line the base with Sponge Fingers which have been briefly dipped in Espresso (NB: the biscuits should be moistened only - if they are too soggy, the texture of the finished dish will be sub-optimal, and the excess coffee will leech out and be discovered as a puddle at the bottom of the dish, which is undesirable). To cover the base of the dish should use up half of the Biscuits you have available.

4. Cover the layer of moistened biscuits with half of the zabaglione-mascarpone mixture; cover this in turn with the remainder of the biscuits, moistened, and then the rest of the zabaglione-mascarpone mixture on top.

Refrigerate for at least twenty four hours before serving, and just before you serve it, sprinkle the surface with Chocolate Powder.