Recipe: Crêpes Suzette

Another dish that appears inexplicably to have fallen from grace, and certainly from restaurant menus. Speaking of it over dinner last night, somebody referred to Crêpes Suzette as 'that quintessentially sixties dish' (before proceeding to relate a story of a Mrs Murray, châtelaine of a grand Scottish country house, who managed to ignite herself along with the dessert, which had been brought to table by the butler for her to apply the match. An excess of hair lacquer explained the rest - another manifestation of the sixties, I suppose - and, having been extinguished by the quick-thinking and damask napkin of one of her guests - for the remainder of dinner she had to sit beneath the ruins of her coiffure, to which absolutely no comment was made by her fellow diners).
Anyway, the dish is another one long overdue for resurrection - the velvety richness of the pancakes in their delicious and unctuous sauce is quite incomparable, and the process of making them could hardly be more straightforward......

For four.

Ingredients: 2 Eggs; 80g Flour; 80g butter (melted and cooled); 150 ml milk; a pinch of salt; 3 tablespoons of Oil;10 tablespoons Cointreau (or Maraschino, or Grandmarnier - depends which you have to-hand); finely-gated rind of one Lemon; 4 tablespoons Sugar; 40g Butter (for reheating the Crêpes).

Method:

1. In a blender, combine Eggs, Flour, Milk, melted Butter, and Salt. Process for about thirty seconds until thoroughly combined (if necessary, use a spatula to clean from the sides of the blender jar any flour which has stuck there, and process again, to ensure all is completely mixed in).

2. Oil the base of a frying pan, and over a medium/high heat use the batter to make eight Crêpes, re-oiling the pan in between each one. (Some authorities would have you let the batter rest for 30 minutes before use - personally, I've never seen the point and use it straightaway).

You can either use the Crêpes immediately, or else cover them in cling-film for use later in the day - best not to leave them until the following day, though.

3. Fold each Crêpe in half, and then in half again, to make a fan shape.

4. Melt the Butter in a large frying pan, then add the grated rind and half of the Cointreau. If cooking on an electric hob, use a match to light the alcohol; if using gas, merely tip the pan in order to let the alcohol fumes catch. As the alcohol burns off, gently tip the pan, to ensure the base of the pan is entirely covered in the butter/cointreau mixture.

5. When the fumes have died down, place the folded Crêpes in a single layer in the pan; sprinkle them with Sugar, and then pour over them the remaining Cointreau. Repeat the process of lighting the alcohol, and gently rotate the pan to baste the Crêpes with the flaming liquid. As soon as the flames have died down, serve. (NB: if your pan isn't large enough to accommodate all Crêpes in a single layer, do them in two stages; do NOT try to cook them in two layers, as they won't heat through properly!)

Belforte, for Christmas…….

A gloriously sunny day, the beech woods in the valley below the village a rich, subdued russet. Bright and crisp and cold enough that the vapour rising from the power-plant many miles away is clearly visible, looking for all the world like the sulphur springs on an Etruscan wall painting; the skyline beyond, a timeless profile of rolling Tuscan hills. The only sounds which break the silence from time to time are the two, unsynchronised, village clocks chiming the hours and the half-hours.........and the occasional sound of gunshot from the surrounding countryside – two days after Christmas, and the boar-hunters are out in force!

I think Elizabeth David would have approved – two days of sybaritic self-indulgence with an emphasis on little-but-good (actually, not so much ‘little’ but at least not wild and untrammelled excess). We feasted for lunch both days on smoked salmon and Parma ham, helped on its way by a bottle or so of Verdicchio di San Gimignano. Afternoons - for me - were spent beside the fire, in the company of a cat or two, immersed in the pages of Harold Acton’s ‘Last of the Medici’ – essentially, wallowing in the tabloid gossip columns of three hundred years ago – and an additional log tossed on the fire from time to time, as necessary. One of the neighbours had delivered an offering on Christmas Eve of a cake about half the size of a ping-pong table, made with apple and pine-nuts and cinnamon which – unusually for Italian cakes – was light as air, and into which inroads were made at teatime each day – around the hour when people materialised from wherever they’d secreted themselves for the afternoon and it became appropriate to start to do things in the kitchen for dinner.

Christmas Day: an Onion Risotto to start (we’d planned on Risotto of White Truffle, but were met with raised eyebrows in Vettovaglie last weekend when we’d gone truffle-hunting, to be told that there were no more to be had, not even ‘ per milliardi’ – which we weren’t about to spend in any case); followed by slices of the neck of the Goose, stuffed with pâté de foie gras, served on a crouton, and with a sauce of raisins and sweet wine (delicious!); then the Goose itself, boned and roast, stuffed with prunes and served with stuffed Cabbage leaves; and finally Crêpes Suzette (the assembled throng – mainly Dutch - had sampled Christmas Pudding in the past, and had decidedly vetoed it this time around…). Two bottles of a 1997 Château La Commandèrie later, and everybody was about ready to call it a day….

Boxing Day: lazy cooking. A Cassoulet which did its thing in the oven over a number of hours, and released delicious smells throughout the house during the day. Preceded by flamiches, made with leeks pulled that morning from the garden, and tasting all the better for it, and finishing off with an uncomplicated and perfectly satisfying Chocolate Mousse. Some of the last of the 1988 Haut Gravère ……..and that was Christmas done and dusted for another year.

Except that we return to Pisa this evening, where the tree and the remaining twelve days’ of presents are awaiting attention, right through until the night of Ebufana on January 6th , when all the children get their presents, and the decorations only and finally come down.
Our habit these days is to spread present-giving over the entire twelve days – 6.30 each evening brings a glass of prosecco and an exchange of presents – rather than to have a glut of the things all on the 25^th, and then a denuded tree looking rather sorry for itself and clearly wondering why it’s still there as the New Year comes and goes, and the decorations looking increasingly like guests who’ve forgotten to leave….Our strategy means the tree has purpose right through until the bitter end!

Tonight's dinner....ought to be a dry crust and a glass of water........but is in fact:

Casarecci

Sausages of Cinta Senese,

Frozen Hazelnut Mousse

Recipe: Parmesan Crisps

This is one of those things where the process is so simple that it barely merits being called a recipe, and yet so delicious that the end result can stop you in your tracks. Perfect to be handed round with drinks - and the understated way in which you can do so, arousing no comment along the way, is the perfect preparation for the first bite, and the raised eyebrows as the taste buds register what's happening!

Makes approximately 40 Crisps (depending upon how finely you grate your parmesan)

Ingredients: 150 grammes of Parmesan

Method:

1. Grate the Parmesan finely. (The finest Microplane grater does a good job because it produces thin ribbons, not granules.)

2. Put a sheet of greaseproof paper (or a silpat sheet, if you have one) over the back of a baking tray (better to put it over the back than inside the tray, as it is easier subsequently to slide the Crisps off if you don't have to negotiate the rim of the tray at the same time).

3. Using a 2" circular pastry-cutter, place the cutter on top of the greaseproof paper and sprinkle a heaped teaspoon of cheese inside the cutter to make a complete disk; make sure the edge of the disk particularly is well covered. (Do NOT press the cheese down into place - it will melt and collapse delicately into itself as it bakes.)

4. Move the cutter along, and repeat the process. Continue until the greaseproof paper is covered in cheese disks. Leave a few millimetres between each disk - they don't spread in baking like biscuits do.

5. Bake at 175C for 8-10 minutes until golden brown. They start to brown when they stop bubbling, so watch them carefully. When golden brown transfer them to a wire rack to cool and crisp. Store in an air-tight container, and try not to eat too many before you have to serve them to your guests!

Falling towards Christmas.....

Christmas appears these days to have become largely about food - or at least, food is a significant manifestation of the general excess that surrounds the celebration of Christmas. Perhaps it was always so......but I suspect not. If it had been, then a good deal more food-based traditions would have sprung up around it than have done, and the raft of recipe books which focus exclusively on Christmas would have more to talk about than they patently manage to do. Every year, more appear in the bookshops, falsely promising the answer to the perennial challenge of what to cook for an entire household 'at celebration' for a period of ten days or so.... and a skim of their contents is enough to show them for what they are: shams!
Oh, they include enough recipes to get you through the period alright, but there's nothing particularly Christmassy about them, as they desperately grapple with the fact that traditional Christmas fare is effectively limited to three or four things: Turkey (we always have Goose...); Christmas Pudding; Mince Pies; and Christmas Cake. Beyond that, it's pretty much a free-for-all.......and inevitably the writers of the books substitute 'luxury' as a stand-in for 'celebratory' and the resulting onslaught of references to sturgeon, and smoked salmon, and caviar, and aspic, and crystallised ginger, and preserved fruits is enough to make your liver take fright merely at the thought of such unashamed binging.

Elizabeth David's 'Christmas', though is quite another matter - as you'd expect. She manages to avoid a bah-humbug approach, and at the same time doesn't fall into the slightly hysterical nuances of 'surviving' the experience that have become an accepted norm these days for dealing with complicated social devoirs....('How to survive the family holiday...', or 'How to survive your Mother-in- Law coming to stay', or other equally silly themes, when the sensible response to such situations if they fill you with such dread must be 'Don't have one', and 'Don't ask her'!).

ED's approach to Christmas is exactly the no-nonsense practical one that you would expect. The reader is left with the strong suspicion the David doesn't have much time for Christmas, but recognises that there isn't much opportunity for ignoring it unless one chooses to become a complete hermit. Despite the fact that she refers to most Christmas food as 'cloying', the book nevertheless provides methods for dealing appropriately with Turkey and Goose, as well as suggestions concerning Beef, Pork, and Duck, Pheasant and Tongue, for those who've had enough of the afore-mentioned. She hasn't made Christmas Pudding in thirty-five years, and hopes 'never to have to do so again', but nevertheless includes two different versions, both of which come with the David guarantee of quality. Likewise, Mincemeat, Brandy Butter, and Stuffing......... And all interspersed with the usual pithy bonmots that make her take on life so crisply refreshing (well, at least for those of us who have reached grumpy-old-person time of life, at any rate....)

ED's particular opinion of Christmas fare, though, is probably best summed up by her aside that one of the most positive thoughts about Christmas is that 'when Christmas morning dawns, for four whole days there won't be any shopping to do....'coupled with her statement that 'if I had my way.....my Christmas Day eating and drinking would consist of an omelette and cold ham and a nice bottle of wine at lunchtime, and a smoked salmon sandwich with a glass of champagne on a tray in bed in the evening!' Which strikes a chord.

And I can't finish without quoting in full her wonderfully jaundiced put-down of those nattily creative ideas for dealing with leftovers that have graced every 'Golden Hands for Cookery' publication practically since Christmas began: '...if any of those marauding bands of persons who apparently roam the countryside calling themselves unexpected guests appear at my door - well, they'll have to make do with an omelette and a glass of wine to help them on their way to their next victims. I think I'd feel less nervous anyway offering them this sort of food than I would if I'd made a lot of little surprises with names like Pantry Shelf Fishbits and Fantastic Belgian Meatballs and Festa Turkey Nut-Logs. I didn't make them up, I swear I didn't, I read about them in a desperately sad American cookery book all about leftovers'.

Read it! I promise, you'll laugh out loud at least once every three pages, and smile wryly in agreement at least once in between.

Tonight's (still resolutely unfestive) menu:

Funghi Trifolati.

Baked Bream, with Anchovy sauce. Endive wilted in Butter.

Cherry Tarts

Recipe: Foie Gras Cured in Salt.....

Definitely something for this time of year, and one of the most unashamedly self-indulgent aspects of Christmas. In years gone by, when we generally spent Christmas on the windswept bleakness of the Larzac plateau, one fixed item in the seasonal timetable was a foray to the market in Millau to get - amongst many, many other things - a Foie Gras, to be prepared from scratch. Never forgotten, forgiven or excused sufficiently was the year when we had a stock on the go in the kitchen which was the rich result of the previous week's consumption of Duck, Goose, and Guineau Fowl, and the cooks decided that this would be a wonderful vehicle for poaching our splendid, succulent, and newly-purchased Foie Gras. So, into the simmering stock it went, and it poached, and it poached and it poached.........until no amount of fishing around in the stock could find anything solid at all, and eventually we had to conclude ruefully that we'd managed to poach it away to nothing. Much to general irritation amongst the waiting diners......The following year, a much more reliable strategy was adopted, and I remember feasting on the thing for days on end, washed down with glasses of Blanquette de Cassis.......Perfect!

This following treatment is unusual, and entirely foolproof. Originally, I got it from the Chef at the Café des Artistes in Key West - Andrew Berman - and have subsequently verified it against various sources in France. The method allows you to shape your Foie Gras into a size which will work perfectly for its intended use. Generally, I use a Foie Gras of around 800 grammes weight - but, as you'll see, the treatment isn't quantity-specific.

Method:

1. The first step is to remove unsightly and undesirable veins within the liver: Bring the foie gras completely to room temperature. If the liver is too cold, it will break rather than bend. Remove any coarse membrane or veins, but disturb the liver as little as possible. The coarsest veins lie between the two lobes and you can get at them by gently easing the two lobes apart. When the liver is at room temperature the lobes can be eased apart without breaking or damaging the structure.

The level of perfection required in this task is proportional to the event - there is no need to be over scrupulous unless you are in charge of a 5 * restaurant. A little bit of red within the foie gras is normal and acceptable at most tables.

In fact, you don't have to remove the veins any more than you do if you are frying a slice of cal'sf liver. You can leave them in place and if when you slice the foie gras you see anything that looks amiss - remove it before serving. If your knife is not razor sharp, the foie gras will slice like butter, but a tough vein will tend to pull out of the slice as you cut.

The problem with digging out the veins in advance is that it necessarily divides the liver into several separate pieces. If you were to cook the liver, as for a classic terrine, these pieces would be welded together again by the melted fat. But if the liver is salt-cured - as here - the pieces remain separate and the eventual slices are more likely to fall apart.

Also since the slices at both ends are the least attractive, I start by cutting the roll in half, and then slice portions starting from each cut face.  The two ends are usually leftovers for another day.

2. Seasoning the liver before you re-form it: You can season your foie gras with a little pepper, or with anything you fancy. A few drops of Armagnac, for example, and any number of spices is also a possibility. My personal preference is for a plain approach, with perhaps just a few grindings of fresh pepper.

3. Reform the liver into a cylindrical shape. Roll it in a cling film and twist the free ends of the film tightly so that it forms a tight cylinder. You will be slicing the cylinder into serving portions, so the cylinder diameter will determine your portion size. Put it in the refrigerator to firm. About an hour, or until the liver is hard and will retain its shape.

4. Remove the cling film, then wrap the fois gras in a single layer of muslin before burying the cylinder in salt. If you have a long thin pate mould or a similar shaped bread tin, this works well. Place the container in the fridge.

5. For a 450gram liver formed into a 2-3" diameter cylinder, 24 hours in salt in the refrigerator followed by 24 hours more in the refrigerator after the salt has been removed salt should be enough. When you remove the salt, disgard the muslin and wrap the foie gras in clingfilm. Like this, the fois gras will keep a week in the 'fridge.

6. To serve, remove the clingilm. Keep cold and covered until needed. Slice and serve with toasted brioche. (For slicing, a thin knife dipped in hot water does the neatest job.) Alternatively, fry the slices to colour each side. It helps if the slices are very cold so you have time to colour the outside before the middle gets too hot and starts to melt.

At this stage, it would be normal to say 'Serve', or 'Enjoy'. With this kind of thing though, I think the appropriate exhortation has to be 'Luxuriate'!

*You can freeze the liver at this stage and it will keep well - most fats have a long shelf life if they are very cold and away from other smells. Eventually they all oxidise and taste 'off'. Defrost and serve as above.

I was fascinated....

.....to see that the sub-title for A.A.Gill's latest book 'Table Talk' is 'Sweet and Sour, Salt and Bitter....' Entirely coincidentally, this has been the subject of much conversation across the dinner table over the past few weeks, in the context of Umami..... and Mr Gill's well-chosen words were a sharp reminder of quite how central this is to the theme of what makes good food good.

I've always been interested in why we respond as we do to particular flavours and smells: frying bacon, toast under the grill, garlic, fresh bread, shavings of truffle.........Do we respond as we do to them merely by association, or is it something more fundamental, like inherited memory, or a kind of physiological process at work within our brains? For ages, until I actually got round to reading it, I was hopeful that Brillat Savarin's book about the Physiology of Taste might address that very subject - but, no: great title, interesting book, but essentially nothing more than a genial romp round the food on offer in Paris in the mid Nineteenth Century.

And then, in following up on Umami, a lot of the answers seem to be provided....

In brief, traditionally, in the West, we've categorised flavours in four groups, viz: sweet, sour, salt, and bitter. But the Japanese have identified a fifth one, which they call Umami - which is what we have to call it too, since there seems to be no translation from the Japanese. To quote from the 'What is Umami' website: "Although there is no English word for it, umami is a savoury taste imparted by glutamate and ribonucleotides, including inosinate and guanylate, which occur naturally in many foods including meat, fish, vegetables and dairy products. The taste of umami itself is subtle. It blends well with other tastes to expand and round out flavours. Most people don’t recognise umami when they encounter it, but it can be detected when eating ripe tomatoes, parmesan cheese, cured ham, mushrooms, meat and fish......."

........Which is a useful short-cut, since I don't really fancy following recipes which feature 150 grammes of glutamate, and half a cup of ribonucleotide, infused with a teaspoon of inosinate!

And they sum up by stating that: "Umami plays an important role making food taste delicious."

There's more, though! Edmund Rolls, a professor of experimental psychology at Oxford, has explained how brain scans are being used to show what happens in our brain as we eat different foods. It appears that eating glutamate activates our taste centres in a way that no other substance does. "Whereas most foods activate a part of the brain called the secondary cortex, glutamate also activates another part of the brain, the left lateral orbifrontal cortex," he says. "Could this be why it seems to act on a second level, giving people an emotional feeling of well-being?"

But, enough of the science! In plain food-speak, I think we're talking about a particular kind of wow-factor, and an interesting process in terms of identifying that rather elusive quality that so many food-stuffs seem to have. Cloves, for instance - a smell I find quite wonderful whenever I unscrew the lid on the jar - could it be that that complicated and deeply old-fashioned smell is Umami? And what about freshly-ground coffee? Or anchovies....? Or Saffron...? Once you start the Umami game, it can be quite difficult to stop: I commented disparagingly the other day to the Technical Department that Coca Cola (which I loathe) represents everything that is not Umami, to which the response was that actually, beneath that horrible two-dimensional sweetness, is a complicated mingling of flavours which is probably Umami with knobs on! Hence its otherwise inexplicable success......

Gin! Now, does that have Umami? I'm not at all certain, and it may be that further research is in order......

In fact, it could be that the entire Christmas break becomes an extended and broadly-based scientific experiment!

Tonight's attempt to stimulate the left lateral orbifrontal cortex:

Individual Haddock Soufflés.
Oxtail, cooked to death in Port, with aromatic vegetables.
Ginger & Lime Cheescake, with fresh Raspberries.

Recipe: Stuffed Cabbage Leaves

A very good high-days-and-holidays recipe, this dish tastes good, presents well, and can be prepared to final cooking stage several hours in advance - so lends itself to a dinner or lunch party when you don't want to find yourself stuck in the kitchen rather than with your guests. Goes particularly well with any dark meat or poultry: Beef, Duck, Goose, Venison......

For Six.

Ingredients: 1 large Carrot; half a Celeriac (approximately 500g in weight); 1 oz Butter (or Duck or Goose fat, if you have it); 1 teaspoon of dried Thyme; 1 small head of Broccoli; 6 Brussels Sprouts; 1 Savoy Cabbage; Salt & Pepper.

Method:

1. Put a large pan of salted water to boil.

2. Peel the Carrot & Celeriac, and cut them into small (about half centimetre) dice. Melt the Butter (or Fat) in a frying pan, and add the diced vegetables and the Thyme to the pan, turning them in the melted Butter several times, then leave to cook over a medium heat while you prepare the other vegetables.

3. Cut the Broccoli florets off their stalk and blanch in the boiling salted water for two minutes. Remove them from the water using a slotted spoon, and put into a colander to drain.

4. Trim the Brussels Sprouts, and cook for four minutes in the boiling water, then remove these also to the colander.

5. Strip the leaves from the Cabbage, and blanch for one minute in the water before removing - you need to end up with six good leaves.

6. Slice each of the Sprouts into four or five pieces, and cut the Broccoli florets into pieces the same size as the pieces of Sprout. Carefully mix these together in a bowl (don't overwork it - you don't want them to go to a mush), and add the cooked Carrot and Celeriac, which should be good and tender by this stage. Check the seasoning and correct as necessary.

7. Make six double-layered squares of cling-film, about 6" x 6" each. In the centre of each one place a blanched Cabbage leaf, from which the central spine has been mostly removed, and on top of that put one-sixth of the vegetable mixture. Bring the edges of the Cabbage leaf up around the filling, and then pull the cling-film up around the whole thing, twisting the cling-film tightly together, to make a tight little bundle. At this stage, you can set the bundles aside until you're ready for the final cooking.

8. For final cooking, place the bundles in the top part of a steamer, and steam over boiling water with the lid on for eight minutes. Serve at once, by carefully untwisting the top of the cling-film, inverting the bundle onto the plate, and peel away the plastic, to leave a plump and perfect parcel, with a flavour bomb inside.