Still Life with Soup

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Few things give me as much pleas­ure as a still life paint­ing. Gior­gio Morandi, Alice Mum­ford, Ben Nich­olson, Edou­ard Vuil­lard all do some­thing magical to a jug of milk, a white vase and a pot of jam and turn the mundane and every­day into some­thing mag­ni­fi­cent. I even like the term itself — ‘still life’ — cap­tur­ing as it does the glor­ies of sit­ting peace­fully and simply look­ing at some­thing for a minute, a day, a month, forever. Poor old Italy and France have been cheated out of the true glor­ies of the still life — their trans­la­tions for the term are ‘la natura morta’ and ‘la nature morte’. ‘Dead nature’ is a ter­rible defin­i­tion and misses the point completely.

Still life, as well as being a glor­i­ous art-form, is the per­fect syn­onym for soup. Eat a bowl of home-made soup and life will stand still for just a moment, as you savour the glor­ies in the bowl. I’ve writ­ten before about the joys of soup, and few can beat this one. Its ingredi­ents are like the com­pon­ents of a Vuil­lard paint­ing — until they’re com­bined you have no idea how per­fectly they go together. And don’t be put off by the length of this soup’s name. It’s quick, easy and effort­less, unlike for example Osso Bucco which has a short snappy title but takes forever to make.

BUTTERNUT SQUASH, MAPLE AND GINGER STILL LIFE, WITH SPICED BUTTER AND PUMPKIN SEEDS

Serves 4

For the soup

  • 1 but­ter­nut squash
  • 2 table­spoons maple syrup
  • Season­ing
  • 2 white onions
  • 1 scant dessert spoon fen­nel seeds
  • Olive oil and knob of butter
  • 1 piece fresh ginger, about 3 cm in length
  • 1 litre good veget­able stock

Wash the but­ter­nut squash — you’re going to be using the skin. Chop it into medium-sized pieces, de-seed it but don’t bother to peel it. Put the pieces in a bak­ing tray and sprinkle with the maple syrup and a little salt and pep­per. Dot with small pieces of but­ter and a small quant­ity of olive oil. Bake in a mod­er­ate oven at about 170 degrees C for about 40 minutes until the squash is soft and slightly car­a­mel­ised. While the squash is cook­ing, chop the onions finely and put in a pan with the fen­nel seeds, some salt and pep­per, a little olive oil and a knob of but­ter. Cook at the gentlest pos­sible heat for about 30 minutes, stir­ring every now and again. The onions should be a rich, golden brown, but not burnt. About five minutes before the squash is ready, finely grate the peeled ginger into the onions.

Tip the squash, skin and all, into the onions, add the litre of veget­able stock, bring to a sim­mer and liquid­ise with a stick blender.

For the spiced butter

  • 20g unsalted butter
  • Good pinch smoked sea salt (ordin­ary sea salt is fine too)
  • Half tea­spoon chilli powder
  • Half tea­spoon smoked paprika
  • A few fresh cori­ander leaves

Make sure the but­ter is soft enough to mix in with the other ingredi­ents. Snip the cori­ander finely with scis­sors and com­bine everything well. Put the but­ter in a piece of cling film, roll it into a small saus­age about 2.5 cms in dia­meter and put in the fridge for 15 minutes or so to harden. Serve the soup with a disc of spiced but­ter, a sprink­ling of pump­kin seeds and a sprig of mint or cori­ander. Sit, eat and ‘have a minute’ as my Granny used to say. It’s still life in a bowl.

Cups, Spoons, Weights and Measures

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China measuring cups with a silver spoon

It’s the sea­son to take stock, count up, meas­ure out, pledge, prom­ise and decide. I’ve made res­ol­u­tions for the first time in five years and on my list is ‘read more poetry’. Expert resolution-makers say that simply vow­ing to do more of some­thing is cheat­ing. But I’m happy with my slightly vague ‘more’ and who­ever said that poetry con­sump­tion should be cal­ib­rated, anyway?

Stems of red berries in a white jug

Stems of fresh red ber­ries on my kit­chen table are throw­ing a new shadow on the wall, but the sil­hou­ettes of the Christ­mas candles are still there too. It’s that time of year when old passes to new and, for once, we actu­ally take note.

Three spoons on a cloth

With all the fren­zied men­tal meas­ur­ing that’s been going on, I wasn’t in the mood to do too much weigh­ing and meas­ur­ing in the kit­chen. For times like this, I have the per­fect recipe.…. Chocol­ate and Crunchy Pea­nut Ice-Cream. It’s an adapt­a­tion of a David Lebovitz recipe, from his inspir­ing but depend­able book The Per­fect Scoop. In fact, while I’m on the sub­ject of New Year’s res­ol­u­tions, to aim to be both inspir­ing and depend­able sounds ideal. I may add that to my list.

Chocolate ice-cream with almond brittle

This is the kind of recipe that you can make while read­ing a book of poetry at the same time, so easy and mem­or­able is it. A cup of this, a half cup of that and you’re almost there.

CHOCOLATE AND CRUNCHY PEANUT ICE-CREAM

  • 1 cup double cream
  • 1 cup semi-skimmed milk (you can use full cream if you prefer. I’ve even tried it with skimmed. All three grades of milk work per­fectly fine)
  • Quarter cup pure cocoa powder
  • Half cup caster sugar
  • Pinch of salt
  • Half a jar of crunchy pea­nut but­ter — this equates to roughly 175g, but a little more or a little less really doesn’t matter

Tip all the ingredi­ents into a pan and while stir­ring with a whisk, bring briefly to a hearty sim­mer. It will bubble up in the pan, at which point take off the heat. Stir in the pea­nut but­ter, allow to cool and churn in an ice-cream maker. It’s as easy as that. My chil­dren have asked if I will make a New Year’s res­ol­u­tion to cre­ate it even more reg­u­larly than I already do.

If in fanci­ful mood, make some almond brittle to poke in the top. Toast the almonds in a small non-stick fry­ing pan. Put to one side. Pour half a cup of caster sugar into the same pan. Without stir­ring, heat the sugar and swirl it around the pan until it melts to a light car­a­mel liquid. It burns eas­ily and also gets fero­ciously hot, so be care­ful. Stir in the nuts and quickly spread out onto a piece of bak­ing parch­ment with a pal­ate knife. It will set almost imme­di­ately. Snap off a piece to suit your appet­ite and your conscience.

Almond and toffee brittle

To my mind, the true meas­ure of a good piece of brittle is that it should be trans­lu­cent enough to read a poem through it. That way, if your New Year’s res­ol­u­tion is the same as mine, you can have your cake while read­ing it at the same time. And who could argue with that?

Scoop of chocolate ice-cream with shard of almond brittle

Longstocking Cocktail

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A glass of quince vodka with clementine juice and prosecco

It’s an Eggs On The Roof tra­di­tion that at this time of year I toast you with a cock­tail. Last year I saluted you with a pomegranate cre­ation I called Tomor­row Shall Be My Dan­cing Day. This year I’d like to say thank you with a quince vodka and clem­entine juice affair.

A glass of quince vodka with clementine juice and prosecco

I’m full of grat­it­ude for your loy­alty, your solid­ar­ity and your shared sense of fun. In fact, I’m just so glad to have enjoyed your com­pany this year that I was going to call my cock­tail Pol­ly­anna, after the glor­i­ously cheer­ful char­ac­ter from children’s fic­tion. But since my cock­tail has a zesty little kick to it, I’ve decided to call it Long­stock­ing, after the fear­less, feisty and life-enhancing Pippi.

A glass of quince vodka mixed with clementine juice and prosecco

LONGSTOCKING COCKTAIL

  • 1 part vodka — I used the quince vodka I made this year, inspired by The Quince Tree. But stand­ard vodka will do
  • 1 part freshly squeezed clem­entine juice
  • 3 parts Prosecco

Here’s to you all.

A glass of quince vodka mixed with clementine juice and prosecco

Apple and Cheese Get an Invitation to the Ball

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Do you remem­ber when I wrote about ‘now­ness’? In the final weeks of his life, it was the word Den­nis Pot­ter used to describe his intense love for the present moment. My Granny’s way of describ­ing ‘now­ness’ was what she called ‘hav­ing a minute’ and this morn­ing I found yet another ver­sion. In 1817 John Keats wrote a let­ter in which he said that ‘…if a spar­row come before my win­dow, I take part in its existence…’ 

It was with thoughts of Keats’ spar­row that I set off on a walk, a piece of cheese and an apple in the pocket of my coat. You’ll know by now that I love pic­nics, espe­cially ones that fit into my pocket. An apple and a piece of cheese have an easy com­pat­ib­il­ity. Each has its own spe­cial qual­it­ies and neither tries to out­shine the other. Their happy camaraderie makes them the per­fect com­pan­ions for a ‘now­ness’ walk. Inev­it­ably, though, when I got home I stopped think­ing about now and star­ted think­ing about ‘what if?’ instead. What would hap­pen if I gave an apple and cheese new, glam­or­ous out­fits and invited them to a party?

APPLE SORBET IN PARMESAN CONES

Serves 4

FOR THE SORBET

  • Ikg cored, unpeeled apples — a sweet, full fla­voured vari­ety such as Cox’s Orange Pippin
  • Juice of a clementine
  • 1 cup water
  • 375g caster sugar

Grate the apples, skin and all. Squeeze the clem­entine juice over the apple and put in a pan with the water and sugar. Bring the mix­ture to a sim­mer and keep on the heat for 5 minutes. The beauty of grat­ing the apple is that you don’t need to cook it for very long, so you will retain the good­ness and fla­vour of the fruit. Tip the cooked fruit into a sieve and allow to drip into a bowl. While it’s drip­ping through, start to make the parmesan cones.

FOR THE PARMESAN CONES

  • 8 table­spoons finely grated parmesan

Pre­heat the oven to 180 degrees C. Using 2 table­spoons of parmesan per cone, pat the grated cheese into four flat circles, on a bak­ing tray lined with bak­ing parch­ment. Cook in the oven for 4 to 5 minutes. Remove from the oven and after one minute, lift the melted cheese circles off the paper and roll between your fin­gers into a cone shape. Don’t leave them to cool before you do this, because the parmesan bis­cuits will simply snap. Once rolled, the cones will be about 6 cm long, rather than full-sized ones. This recipe is bet­ter in miniature.

By now the apple juice should have dripped through. Cool the juice and then churn in an ice-cream maker. Don’t panic about its amber col­our at this stage. The churn­ing and freez­ing pro­cess will turn the juice a pale, creamy pink.

Place a scoop of sorbet into each cone. If you think that an ice-cream cone isn’t prop­erly dressed without a chocol­ate flake, dec­or­ate your sorbet with a tiny cel­ery stalk, its leaves still attached. The com­bined fla­vours are per­fect. And after all, if apple and cheese are going to the Ball, they have to be given the right accessor­ies, don’t they?

Faster than the Speed of a Poached Pear

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The news that sci­ent­ists have recor­ded sub­atomic particles trav­el­ling faster than the speed of light has been greeted with aston­ish­ment. I’m no doubt miss­ing out a mil­lion links in the sci­entific chain here, but in its simplest form it shoots craters into Albert Einstein’s sac­red prin­ciple that noth­ing travels faster than light. It might be pos­sible to watch these particles, known as neut­ri­nos, leav­ing after they’ve arrived in the place where we’ve already seen them. Roughly trans­lated, it raises the pos­sib­il­ity of going back­wards in time.

Time travel is some­thing cooks have been able to do for gen­er­a­tions of course. Noth­ing will trans­port you back to a moment in your child­hood, a summer’s day or a per­fect birth­day, like the taste and aroma of the food that you ate at those golden moments.

Without fail, the sight of a poached pear takes me back to Italy circa 1991. A softly spoken, eld­erly chef called Benito told me that the only way to check if a poached pear is per­fectly cooked is to pierce it with the quill of a wild Umbrian por­cu­pine. To make sure that I’d always cook per­fect pears in future, he gave me a quill as a present. (Benito didn’t speak a single word of Eng­lish, so it’s per­fectly pos­sible that I com­pletely mis­un­der­stood him and that what he was really say­ing was that the sharp point of a por­cu­pine quill is the per­fect weapon to attack people steal­ing pears from your tree.)

This morn­ing, I was trans­por­ted back to my con­ver­sa­tion with Benito when I found some beau­ti­ful Con­corde pears at the market.

So, com­pletely unaided and without a single neut­rino in sight, I take you back 20 years. Until neut­ri­nos really prove their stuff, this is the finest time travel I know — the culin­ary kind.

POACHED PEARS WITH BUTTERSCOTCH ICE-CREAM AND PEAR CRISPS

Serves 4

For the Poached Pears

  • 4 ripe, firm pears such as concorde
  • 300ml red wine
  • 100ml water
  • 1 cin­na­mon stick
  • 1 star anise
  • 80g caster sugar

Peel the pears, slice a piece off the bot­tom so they will stand up straight once cooked, Remove the core from under­neath, or leave it in if you prefer. Com­bine all the other ingredi­ents in a pan, heat until the sugar is dis­solved and then add the peeled pears. Make a car­touche out of greaseproof paper. This is simply a circle of paper the same dia­meter as the pan with a small circle cut out of the middle to allow steam to escape. Press the car­touche onto the pears to keep them in the liquid as they cook. Sim­mer gently for around an hour, until the point of a knife, or a por­cu­pine quill of course, slides in eas­ily. Allow the pears to cool in the poach­ing liquid. When the pears are cool, remove them from the liquid. Reduce the liquid to a rich syrup.

For the Pear Crisps

  • I pear
  • 25g caster sugar
  • 1 table­spoon lemon juice
  • 100ml water

Heat the oven to 110 degrees C. Boil the water, pour into a bowl and add the sugar and lemon juice. Stir until dis­solved. Slice the pear finely using a man­dolin if you have one, or a very sharp knife. Dip the slices in the sugar water. Bake in the oven on a tray lined with bak­ing paper for around 1.5 hours, until the slices are dried out, but not yet brown.

For the But­ter­scotch Ice-Cream

But­ter­scotch

  • 225g unsalted butter
  • 170g brown sugar
  • 50ml water
  • Pinch of salt
  • 150ml cream
Cus­tard
  • 225g cream
  • 50g caster sugar
  • 475g semi skimmed milk
  • 8 egg yolks

First make the but­ter­scotch, by com­bin­ing the but­ter, sugar, salt and water. Sim­mer for 15 minutes, until the col­our darkens to a pale car­a­mel brown. Keep stir­ring so that it doesn’t burn. Take off the heat and stir in the cream. It will bubble and churn up. Put to one side to cool.

Whisk the egg yolks and sugar together until they become pale, creamy and form trails when you lift the whisk and let the mix­ture drip into the bowl. This is called the ‘rib­bon stage’. Com­bine the cream and milk and bring almost to the boil.

Whisk a spoon­ful of the cream mix­ture into the egg and then trans­fer the egg mix­ture into the pan of cream. Keep whisk­ing con­stantly to avoid it turn­ing to scrambled eggs. Con­tinue to heat gently and when the cus­tard is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. sieve the mix­ture onto the but­ter­scotch, stir well and pour into a chilled bowl to cool down. Once cold, churn in an ice-cream maker.

Assemble the pear, crisp, ice-cream and syrup. While you eat, spec­u­late about the pos­sib­il­ity of eat­ing poached pears which haven’t been made yet. That way you get to eat them before the washing-up even exists.

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Smoked Salmon and Pentimenti

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The Leonardo da Vinci exhib­i­tion at London’s National Gal­lery has only just opened, but it’s already sold out. Not bad, con­sid­er­ing that fewer than twenty of his paint­ings survive.

I was cap­tiv­ated to hear that the work newly attrib­uted to Leonardo, Sal­vator Mundi, was only firmly estab­lished as being his by its ‘pen­ti­menti’. Loosely trans­lated, pen­ti­menti are ‘marks of repent­ance’ — in other words, adjust­ments, mis­takes, rethinks, alterations.

As a meta­phor for life, what could be bet­ter than the real­isa­tion that we’re defined by our mis­takes, rather than by our breezy suc­cesses? You can take the gloomy view and assume this means we can never shrug off our fail­ures. Or, like me, you can take the Pol­ly­anna line of argu­ment that we’re shaped, tempered and for­ti­fied both by our imper­fec­tions and by the things we elect to change.

One of my most pre­cious pos­ses­sions is a sil­ver ring made for me by one of my chil­dren. Look closely and you will see its ‘pen­ti­menti’ — the fin­ger­print glan­cingly cap­tured in the sil­ver before the metal hardened. It wouldn’t fetch much at auc­tion, but it’s price­less to me.

Or exam­ine the pin cush­ion made for me by one of my old­est friends, who knows all too well that I have an abid­ing pas­sion for strong tea. It fea­tures a teapot, two tea­cups and a milk jug, all picked out in pin heads, along with my ini­tial. Its pen­ti­menti are a couple of miss­ing pins, and isn’t it beautiful?

Or the hand-made jugs and and bowls I col­lect, each of them marked by a thumb print, mis­shapen edge or wonky sig­na­ture. The pen­ti­menti make them more glor­i­ous than per­fect ver­sions could ever have been.

The pen­ti­menti argu­ment works with food too. I’ve just made Smoked Sal­mon Pen­ti­menti, in fact. Not a new, elaborately-shaped form of pasta, but a way of feed­ing six unex­pec­ted guests with only 140 grams of smoked sal­mon. Logic says that smoked sal­mon shouldn’t be cooked and that 140g is nowhere near enough to feed so many. But what could have been a mis­take turned into a triumph.

SMOKED SALMON PENTIMENTI

Serves 6

  • 50g but­ter
  • 75g flour
  • 1 litre semi skimmed milk
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 300g mature Ched­dar cheese, grated
  • Half cup or 125ml dry white wine
  • 2kg floury potatoes
  • 1kg white onions
  • 140g smoked salmon

Pre­heat the oven to around 165 degrees C. You will need an oven-proof bak­ing dish around 25cm wide, 30cm long and 10cm deep.

Peel and slice the raw pota­toes and onions into 2mm thick rounds. Melt the but­ter and make a roux by adding the flour. Stir to com­bine and heat gently for a couple minutes to ensure the floury taste is cooked out. Heat the milk in a sep­ar­ate pan and once sim­mer­ing, add the onions to the milk. Keep the milk sim­mer­ing for a few minutes until the onions have softened slightly before remov­ing them with a slot­ted spoon and put­ting them to one side.

Gradu­ally add the hot milk to the roux and keep stir­ring with a whisk. The heat of the milk will make it much easier to com­bine with the roux, as well as redu­cing the risk of lumps. Once all the milk has been added, con­tinue to whisk until you have a creamy sauce which has a custard-like con­sist­ency. Stir in the white wine and keep at a sim­mer. Add the bay leaves and 200g of the Ched­dar cheese and whisk until melted in. Check the season­ing and add salt and pepper.

Ladle a scant spoon­ful of sauce over the bot­tom of your dish. Then altern­ate a single layer of potato slices, fol­lowed by smoked sal­mon, onion and then one third of the remain­ing cheese sauce. Repeat the lay­ers of potato, sal­mon, onion and sauce, fol­lowed by a final layer of potato, sauce and the remain­ing 100g of cheese. Place in the oven and cook for 1 and a half hours. If you’re wor­ried that the top is brown­ing too much, cover with a layer of foil. Check that the pota­toes and onions are soft by pier­cing them with a fork.

Serve with a simple green salad. Any­thing more elab­or­ate would be a pen­ti­mento too far — trust me.

Review: Tasting India by Christine Manfield

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Eggs On The Roof Reviews

Tast­ing India by Christine Man­field
Pub­lished by Con­ran Octopus, Novem­ber 2011, £40.00
Pho­to­graphy by Anson Smart

Com­batants in the fight over e-cookery books versus prin­ted ones have new ammuni­tion. Or should that be heavy artil­lery. If you believe paper books take up too much room, you’ll no doubt point accus­ingly at Christine Manfield’s new book, Tast­ing India. It’s vast — the biggest, heav­iest and most lav­ish cook­ery book I’ve ever seen. Its tur­meric yel­low satin cover embossed with vivid pink pea­cocks is just about as showy as it’s pos­sible to be.

Yes, it’s imprac­tical — one splash from an unruly, bub­bling pan of dahl and its gleam­ing golden jacket would be ruined. And yes, its girth puts it in the super heavy­weight class. It’s not a book to amble through so much as rock-climb over. But, call me a romantic if you like, I’ve fallen in love with it.

The Aus­tralian chef Christine Man­field has been vis­it­ing India for more than twenty years. Her rev­er­ence for the coun­try, tempered with a prag­matic under­stand­ing of its faults, shines through the text. It’s part travelogue, part encyc­lo­pe­dia, part mem­oir, part cook­ery book. Where she’s been so shrewd is to avoid a ped­es­trian, dogged tramp through each region. That’s not how cuisine works, and cer­tainly not in India. As she says, ‘For me, part of the excite­ment of con­tem­por­ary Indian cuisine lies in the way each cook or chef car­ries the recipes and her­it­age of their home­land with them, wherever they hap­pen to find themselves.’

Immerse your­self in the pages of this book — there are nearly 500 of them, so it will take a while. Mar­vel at the stun­ning pho­to­graphs by Anson Smart. Savour the recipes for tea-leaf frit­ters, scal­lops in spiced coconut, desert-bean koftas with onion curry and curd dump­lings soaked in saf­fron milk. Just ima­gine what they must taste like, or throw cau­tion to the wind and lug this book into the kit­chen and actu­ally cook from it. Either way it’s entrancing.