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.

Falanghina...

I thought I'd do some research. We first discovered Falanghina a couple of years ago - more rounded on the palate than the white wines from further north like Frascati or Pinot Grigio, but still with an agreeable degree of crispness. Only patchily available until recently - although that is as much a reflection of the re-stocking eccentricities of enotecas and italian supermarkets as anything else - now, you can barely move for falling over the stuff! Which is no bad thing...

And the research was well worth the effort, since it appears that Falanghina is no more nor less than the famous Falernium wine so beloved of the Romans, two thousand years ago. Apparently, there was a particularly good vintage in 121 BC, which went down in the annals and was spoken of with awe for decades - if not centuries - to follow. I'd like to think I recognised the name from all those years of wading through Cicero and Tacitus, but I suspect it's more likely the influence of Robert Harris's imperial pot-boilers...

The Falanghina grape derives etymologically from the latin 'Phalernimum' - i.e from Falerno - and there's some idea that it was used at that time to make a sweet wine, although I haven't found any supporting evidence for that particular assertion. The idea of ancient wines being naturally sweet always seems unlikely to me, given some experience of the sort of wines produced in primitive communities in Greece, where the process is presumably unchanged from several millenia ago. The end result tends to be thin and harsh, with every inducement to add things like honey and herbs in order to make the stuff drinkable at all...

Anyway, it seems that Falernium continued to be popular in its various guises right through until the early twentieth century, when it was suddenly practically wiped out when Phylloxera hit the vineyards of Campania, and it disappeared off the map for a good fifty years or so. Painstakingly reintroduced over the past quarter century, it seems now to have clawed its way back to a position of some eminence. At the scrubbing-alcohol end of the scale, for five euros a bottle it makes very good house wine....and if you want to push the boat out and indulge in a more sophisticated version, for a few euros more, then the choices are absolutely excellent! Highly recommended...

Meanwhile, we're having the hottest summer here that we've had for five years...the Technical Department is sweating it out at the top of a scaffolding tower as he restores the ceiling painting in the Loggia, and every so often it's necessary to resort to standing shoulder deep in the lily pond, quaffing ice cold glasses of Kir (made not with Cassis - we've run out - but with a local version made with Myrtle Berries; slightly medicinal in flavour, but not entirely unpleasant for all that...)

Tonight's Dinner:

Crespelle stuffed with Bechamel, Spinach & Ragu.

Capponi (a beautiful red fish, one of the Gurnard family) cooked in sephardic fashion.

Passion Fruit Tarts.

Meltdown in Serbia...

Belgrade, again. I’ve nothing against the place, but twice in three months comes close to drawing the short straw….And what bemuses me is the fact that I keep coming across British people who are here on holiday…..out of choice. Bizarre!

The heat is extreme. Much hotter than Italy when I flew out on Sunday, and that was fairly sweltering…This time, though, I’m staying in a splendid ‘Design’ hotel in the Old City, where my room is more like a labyrinthine air-conditioned cave than a hotel room, with myriad arrow-slit windows dotted around the walls, and soothing coloured lights strobing gently on the ceiling of the sleeping ‘cave’ at the centre of the space …..the whole thing is uber Cool in every sense of the word and is a welcome retreat from the heat of the streets outside. The decorative theme for the hotel is Presidents Past and Present, and in addition to the huge 3-D copy of Mount Rushmore which dominates the bar, each room is themed for some political leader from recent history….I’m told the selection is eclectic in the extreme, so includes both Churchill and Hitler, as well as Mao, and Mahatma Ghandi. I didn’t recognise the oil painting which hangs over my bed, and had to ask. I was rather hoping it would be somebody meaty like Ceaucescu…..but in the end it turns out to be Eisenhower (or, as Radomir on reception managed to pronounce it ‘Icing-Whore’).

After my last visit, I rather feel I’ve ‘done’ Serbian cuisine ….not awful, but too much like second-grade Greek food to be an argument. Generally rather slablike in look and feel – slabs of meat, slabs of cheese, slabs of bread – and unlikely to inspire a repeat experience. All the Serbians, when asked, tend to glaze over whenever Serbian food is mentioned, and start talking enthusiastically about Italian or Chinese restaurants instead. I can understand why.

Last night – on recommendation - I found myself in a fish restaurant called ‘Octopus’, which nestles almost under the arches of the Bratsvo Bridge, half way down a deserted street, and fronted by a row of neglected buildings that were clearly long-derelict. To get there I had to pick my way across tramlines, and under the drips from rattling and inefficient air-conditioning outlets, all of which reminded me of night-time Piraeus from thirty years ago. Like a scene from ‘On the Waterfront’, the illuminated lanterns outside the restaurant struck an incongruous note in this dockside wasteland. Once through the heavy wooden door, though, it was oil paintings and uniformed waiters, with a white haired old man playing background music on a grand piano, and the place was all soft conversation and quiet opulence.

Octopus Terrine – which described itself as a carpaccio, but wasn’t – was followed by a Tuna Steak in Sesame Seeds, and what advertised itself as a ‘Serbian Salad’, and turned out to be a Greek Salad, minus the feta, and with a lot of very hot onion in its place. The Octopus was good, the Tuna was pretty much as you would expect – although served rather surprisingly on what looked like a deep-fried slab of Hovis – and the local wine had a kick that definitely left me with a thick head when I woke up this morning. Dense and smooth, it was not at all bad…I pondered the dessert menu for just long enough to decipher the Cyrillic figures for ‘Tiramisu’ and ‘Woodland Fruits’ – and then decided that I’d had enough of a good thing: the pedal on the piano was thumping insistently in my right ear, and amidst the excessive trills and ornamentation introduced by the octogenarian pianist, it was possible – just – to decipher ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ followed, inevitably, by ‘My Way’. Time to hit the road….

This evening, the Conference programme promises a river cruise and dinner, accompanied by the delights of Jovan Maljokovic and his Orchestra..

Somehow I think I’ll be playing hookey..

Tonight’s Dinner:

Who knows….

The First Peach of the Year....

Delicious and sweet! Small, admittedly, but the flesh was juicy and the flavour intense. I wouldn't have thought to pick it, but as an unfortunate windfall, found beneath the tree yesterday morning, it was duly sacrificed and was found to be perfect...

In a garden which has such a vibrant bird population as this one, the chance of getting a decent peach crop is next to nil, as the fruit - for the most part - is delicately pecked while still on the branch. I can't say I begrudge the birds their plunder, since the birdsong is such a pleasure, and it was never the idea that we wanted to be self-sufficient in Peaches anyway, given the abundance that's readily available in the market all of three minutes' walk away. In any event, the fruit looks wonderful on the tree, and the smell of peaches in that part of the garden is pretty heady.

To Osteria Violino for dinner last night, in Via Tinta, just across the river. Giovanni and Lara recommended it ages ago, and Sarah took us there for the first evening of her weekend here. Quiet - in fact, we were the only people there - but the food was good: swordfish carpaccio, and a delicious leek sformatino, followed by a squid-ink pasta that was as delicious as it was alarming, colouring everybody's lips and teeth a dense goth-new-romantic black that looked rather worryingly indelible as it was transferred delicately onto napkins. Definitely not a dish for a romantic date! All washed down by a very good bottle of Falanghina - which seems to be this year's 'wine of the moment' .....A langorous stroll home across the Ponte di Mezzo, and through the crowd in Piazza Garibaldi who were half-concentrating on the antics of a live band performing under the arcade of the Casino, and then home, to sit in the candle-lit loggia, drinking grappa and contemplating the campanile of San Francesco illuminated against the night sky. A summer night in Tuscany....

And the passing of an era. A phone call earlier this week to our aged Falegname, Bruno, elicited the throaty response from his wife that he was 'under the ground'....and thinking that she meant he was in the cellar, the question how long he was likely to be down there got the unambiguous reply: "permanently. We buried him!" He was eighty seven, and had lived in Cascina, a few miles down the road from Pisa, for his entire life. He learnt his craft before the last war, presumably from somebody who had trained in carpentry in the last years of the nineteenth century, and had laboriously over the years churned out for us beautiful doors, and shutters, and french windows, and an enormous refectory table...all crafted with a skill that nobody knows any more. Poor hearing meant that his interminable stories were always told at full volume, and his grasp on modern life certainly stopped short of the appearance of the euro - to the end of his days he could think only in terms of lire, and always appeared suspicious and confused when confronted with payment in the new currency. Never enough noughts on the end for his comfort. A true character - he will be missed...

Tonight's Dinner:

Pasta with Lemon & Hazelnut Sauce

Fiorentina, with Arugula and Parmesan

Chocolate & Apricot Tarts