Author Archives: Eggs On The Roof

The Darkling Thrush and Pontack

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It’s that bleak, oppress­ive time of year when light is sparse and joys are scant. ‘Winter’s dregs’ was how writer Thomas Hardy described it, in his poem The Dark­ling Thrush. Depend­ing on my mood, I either sign up to the plucky cour­age of Hardy’s wind-battered bird, trilling mer­rily from his twig. Or I side with the lugubri­ous poet, shar­ing his bewil­der­ment that the thrush could find any­thing remotely jolly to sing about.

I leant upon a cop­pice gate
When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter’s dregs made des­ol­ate
The weak­en­ing eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all man­kind that haunted nigh
Had sought their house­hold fires.

The land’s sharp fea­tures seemed to be
The Century’s corpse out­leant,
His crypt the cloudy can­opy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fer­vour­less as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs over­head
In a full-hearted even­song
Of joy illim­ited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the grow­ing gloom.

So little cause for car­ol­ings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was writ­ten on ter­restrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

I’ve decided that today belongs to the brave little bird, des­pite plenty of evid­ence to the con­trary. And in that spirit I reached for blood oranges, both tart and sweet; for fen­nel, full of ani­seedy crunch; and for Pon­tack sauce.

Pon­tack sauce? I knew noth­ing about it until I dis­covered For­age, a group of gather­ers and for­agers from Here­ford­shire who pick nat­ural ingredi­ents from hedgerows and wood­lands and turn them into delicious-tasting products like Pon­tack, wild rose spice mix and wild herb rub.

I had no idea what to expect when I ordered a bottle online. Pontack is made from cider vin­egar, eld­er­ber­ries, onions, root ginger and all­spice and appar­ently dates back to the 18th cen­tury. It’s a rich, deep red in col­our and tastes like a roun­ded, fruity vin­egar with a hint of cloves. Hav­ing tasted it, it seemed to me to be the per­fect ingredi­ent for a vinai­grette, although I dis­covered that a couple of spoon­fuls were also deli­cious stirred into a slow-cooked beef casserole.

BLOOD ORANGE AND FENNEL SALAD WITH PONTACK VINAIGRETTE

For each per­son you will need:

  • One quarter of a fen­nel bulb, sliced very thinly
  • Half a blood orange, peeled and thinly sliced. Any sur­plus juice can be added to the vinaigrette
  • Hand­ful salad leaves
  • Hand­ful walnuts
  • Extra vir­gin olive oil
  • Pon­tack sauce
  • Salt, pep­per and a pinch of sugar

Whisk 2 parts of Pon­tack with 1 part extra vir­gin olive oil. Add salt, black pep­per and a gen­er­ous pinch of sugar. Once emul­si­fied trickle the vinai­grette over the salad, oranges and fen­nel and top with wal­nuts. Serve this sharp, cit­rus salad with char-grilled sal­mon. The two bal­ance each other perfectly.

Such a vibrant, bright, fresh-tasting salad would, I ima­gine, have cut no ice with the per­en­ni­ally gloomy Thomas Hardy. But that plucky little thrush would have loved it — espe­cially the eld­er­berry Pon­tack. That’s prob­ably what he was singing about.

Miss Galindo’s Canape

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I love the concept of the canape. All the fla­vours of an entire plate­ful, heaped extra­vag­antly into one per­fect mouth­ful. But I’ve just dis­covered some­thing I love as much as the canape, and that’s the deriv­a­tion of the word. Canape was coined in 18th cen­tury France and means ‘sofa’ — a wel­com­ing, capa­cious, invit­ing seat on which to place a host of con­vivial part­ners. The per­fect descrip­tion of the best kind of canape, in other words. I haven’t enjoyed a word so much since I dis­covered ses­qui­ped­alian — a very long word which means a very long word.

Idle thoughts about sofas took me to Eliza­beth Gaskell, the Vic­torian nov­el­ist and bio­grapher of Char­lotte Bronte. In 1859 Mrs Gaskell com­bined a group of stor­ies under the col­lect­ive title Round the Sofa. Char­ac­ters gather around the sofa of Mrs. Dawson to hear her account of Lady Lud­low. The sub­sequent story of the Count­ess, her feck­less son Lord Sep­timus and her loyal com­pan­ion Miss Galindo became one of the most com­pel­ling strands of the bril­liant BBC tele­vi­sion adapt­a­tion of Mrs Gaskell’s work, Cran­ford.

This is the canape I’ve devised in hon­our of Miss Galindo, the spin­ster daugh­ter of a Bar­onet. In Mrs Gaskell’s story she struggles uncom­plain­ingly to sup­port her­self and I figured it was time she was treated to a little lux­ury. So in trib­ute to the vali­ant Miss Galindo, here’s an edible sofa to enjoy while sit­ting on a sofa, read­ing Round the Sofa.

CANAPES OF SCALLOPS ON A JERUSALEM ARTICHOKE CRISP WITH ARTICHOKE PUREE AND PANCETTA

  • 500 g Jer­u­s­alem artichokes, scrubbed but unpeeled
  • 200 g fresh scallops
  • A little lemon juice
  • 1 large knob butter
  • 100 ml single cream
  • 200 ml ground­nut oil
  • Season­ing
  • A few fresh thyme leaves
  • Around 6 slices pancetta

Reserve one large, evenly shaped artichoke — put the oth­ers to one side to use for the puree. Slice the reserved artichoke very finely with a man­dolin. As you slice, place the pieces in a bowl of water which has been acid­u­lated with lemon juice. The lemon will stop the artichoke from discolouring.

Dry the artichoke slices. Heat the ground­nut oil in a pan until very hot — it should be about 1.5 cm deep. Test the tem­per­at­ure by put­ting a cube of bread into the oil and check­ing that it fries crisply. Lower the artichoke slices care­fully into the oil for around two minutes until crisp and brown. Remove from the oil and place them on kit­chen paper while you pre­pare the other ingredi­ents. (The crisps are deli­cious on their own, with a little sea salt, but you want to end up with enough crisps to part­ner the scal­lops, so count carefully.)

Bring the remain­ing artichokes to a sim­mer in a pan of salted water and cook until soft.
Puree the cooked artichokes, along with the but­ter and cream. Sea­son to taste and keep warm.

Fry the pan­cetta until crisp and remove from pan. Using the same pan, add a little olive oil and fry the scal­lops for a couple of minutes each side, until golden. Don’t over­cook them or they will become tough.

Assemble your sofas by heap­ing a tea­spoon of puree on a crisp, pla­cing a gen­er­ous shard of pan­cetta on top and crown­ing with a thyme-topped scal­lop. Squeeze a few drops of lemon over the scal­lops if so inclined. Eat imme­di­ately — no-one likes a soggy sofa.

When Colours Run Riot

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There was a phase in the 1970s when interior design ran riot. I remem­ber my grandpa announ­cing proudly that he’d dec­or­ated the walls of his small front room with four wildly dif­fer­ent wall­pa­pers and picked out the wood­work in egg-yolk yellow.

I thought of my grandpa as I walked around David Hockney’s new exhib­i­tion A Big­ger Pic­ture at the Royal Academy in Lon­don. The exhib­i­tion is vast and over­whelm­ing and throbs with wild col­ours and pat­terns. It’s gen­er­ous, showy and utterly inde­pend­ent in spirit and yet it’s metic­u­lous and some­how dogged too — qual­it­ies that pretty much sum up my grandpa.

Walk­ing through Oxford’s Uni­ver­sity Parks later that day, I felt some­how let down that the winter branches didn’t have the vibrancy of David Hockney’s trees.

But turn­ing 180 degrees so that the sun was shin­ing on the trunks, the col­ours jumped into life. I got a whole new per­spect­ive. And if that’s not a meta­phor for life, I don’t know what is.

Muted, restrained food is the last thing I wanted after the Hock­ney tidal wave. I craved the idea of eat­ing a riot of col­our. When in that mood and at this time of year, there’s really only one choice — full throttle, lip-staining, finger-smearing, red and yel­low beet­roots. I found a bag of just such a thing for half price at Whole­foods, along with a sil­ver foil hick­ory smoker from Fin­land for £2.29.

I have a dis­astrous record at home-smoking. The last time I tried we had to evac­u­ate the house. But I figured I’d be safe in the hands of the Finns. If you want a really strong smokey fla­vour, this bag will dis­ap­point you. But for a del­ic­ate hint of smoke, without the need for a full evac­u­ation plan, this bag works fine.

SMOKED RED AND GOLDEN BEETROOT WITH GOAT’S CURD AND SMOKED GARLIC

Serves 4

  • 2 red and 2 golden beetroot
  • 4 small red onions
  • Salad leaves
  • Goat’s curd
  • 1 head garlic
  • 2 table­spoons bal­samic vinegar
  • Bunch thyme
  • 2 table­spoons olive oil
  • Black­berry vin­egar — I bought mine from Womers­ley Foods
  • 1 dis­pos­able foil smoker — bought from Whole­foods for £2.29

Wash the beet­root, but don’t bother to peel them. Slice into rounds about 1.5 to 2 cm thick. Peel the onions but leave whole. Toss the beet­root, onions, whole head of gar­lic and thyme in the olive oil and bal­samic vin­egar, sea­son and place in a single layer inside the foil smoker. Seal the foil and place in a pre-heated oven at 250 degrees C. After 15 minutes turn the heat down to 190 degrees C. Cook for a fur­ther 45 minutes. Remove the pack­age from the oven and allow to cool for 15 minutes before cut­ting open the foil. Peel the beet­root and slice into thin­nish circles.

Make a salad dress­ing from a little olive oil, black­berry vin­egar and season­ing and dress the salad leaves. Pile the beet­root, onions and scoops of goat’s curd over the leaves and trickle over a little of the bal­samic and olive oil from the smoker. After its hour of bak­ing, the gar­lic will be rich, sweet and unc­tu­ous — per­fect when spread on a little sour­dough bread.

I ate my riot­ous salad and bread with beet­root soup that I made by bak­ing beet­roots and apples for an hour and blend­ing with veget­able stock and a little grated fresh horseradish.

apple on a plate

My grandpa was wild with his col­our schemes but excep­tion­ally timid in his tastes. He would have hated this recipe. But he would have loved the ideas that lie behind it, and that’s good enough for me.

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, apart from the pea­nut but­ter, into a pan. Over a mod­er­ate heat, stir with a whisk and bring briefly to a hearty sim­mer. It will bubble up in the pan, at which point take off the heat. Mix 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?