Food and wine pairing is achingly fashionable at the moment. I’m afraid my knowledge about which wine to pair with what food doesn’t extend beyond when to drink Chablis and why Cabernet Sauvignon doesn’t work with rhubarb crumble. I am, however, very good at food and performance pairing.  In case you haven’t come across it, food and performance pairing is the art of what to eat after a trip to the theatre. To give you an idea:

The Cherry Orchard - bitter cherry clafoutis and a litre of vodka.

Death of a Salesman - hotdog with a friend who feels a failure.

Waiting for Godot — a picnic of chicken and raw carrots while waiting for an acquaintance who never turns up.

Titus Andronicus - nothing for a week.

I now know what to eat after a Wagner opera. Having just seen Wagner for the first time in the form of the English National Opera’s production of The Flying Dutchman, I’m proudly in the post-Wagnerian phase of my life. Orla Boylan’s interpretation of tragic Senta — intense, introverted and slightly obsessive — is mesmerising. She’s a magnificent soprano who combines touching sensitivity with a deep, visceral power.

At dinner after the performance, there was something on the restaurant menu that seemed perfect to follow such high and intense drama — crab. Not a prissy crab, dressed and piled softly back into the shell from whence it had come and piped with mayonnaise stripes. But an armour-plated Wagnerian crab that looked as though it had just clattered into the restaurant, clambered onto the table and said “Ok — I dare you.” With crackers and probes, snippers and forks, it was a war of attrition to see who would win — the crab or me.

Orla is the best soprano to have at the dinner table. Not only does she sing so beautifully that you want to weep, as a teenager she had a holiday job boiling, cracking and dressing the crabs that her dad caught in pots. After the soaring performance of The Flying Dutchman, there was the impressive drama of watching Orla do battle with the crab, hoiking out morsels of meat that the rest of us failed to find.

I watched The Flying Dutchman with a very clever friend who grows things almost as well as Orla sings things. My friend’s magnificent garden is crammed with herbs that would make even a fish-finger fan want to cook.

Aniseed-flavoured sweet cicely overflows in flouncy, lacy heaps, along with drifts of lovage, clouds of wild flowers, perky rhubarb and things I’ve never heard of.

So, in honour of the magnificent Orla Boylan — as well as The Flying Dutchman and my friend’s glorious garden — here is Wagnerian Crab Salad with Sweet Cicely and Wild Flowers along with a glass of Sweet Cicely and Cucumber Cocktail. The crab isn’t the macho monster that I did battle with after the opera. But just as you can’t watch a Wagner opera every day of the week, you can’t fight a crab every day either.

SWEET CICELY AND CUCUMBER COCKTAIL WITH A LOVAGE STRAW

• 1 part Limoncino
• 1 part gin
• 5 parts lemonade
• Juice of half a lime
• Quarter of a cucumber, peeled
• Ice cubes
• A handful of sweet cicely tender stems, to taste
• Sweet cicely leaves to decorate
• Lovage stalks, trimmed to make straws

Combine all the ingredients, apart from the decorative leaves and lovage stalks, in a food processor. Puree to a liquid and pour into a glass. You can strain the liquid if you prefer. The stems of lovage are hollow and make perfect straws. They add the most delicious flavour of perfumed celery to any drink. Garnish the cocktail with sweet cicely leaves and add a lovage straw.

WAGNERIAN CRAB SALAD WITH SWEET CICELY, WILD FLOWERS AND AVOCADO

Serves 2

• 100g white crab meat
• 1 avocado
• 1 dessert spoon creme fraiche
• A few chives plus the flowers
• A few sweet cicely stems and leaves, chopped finely
• Zest of 1 lemon plus a squirt of lemon juice
• Seasoning
• Viola flowers or any other edible flowers

Slice the avocado and divide between two plates. Combine the crab, creme fraiche, lemon juice and zest, seasoning, chopped chives and sweet cicely stems. Pile on top of the avocado and decorate with chive flowers and sweet cicely flowers.

Eat and drink the above after any Wagner opera. They go together perfectly.

 Eat London² By Peter Prescott & Terence Conran     

                     Published by Conran Octopus

April 2012 — Price £20.00 

The difficulty all restaurant guidebooks wrestle with is how to stay current and authoritative when the food industry is so mercurial. Eat London² hits that problem with its very first entry. Petersham Nurseries Cafe and Teahouse may have been run by the chef Sky Gyngell, ‘one of the top food personalities in London’, but, much to the disappointment of her fans and, presumably, the authors of this book, she’s now left. But this is where Eat London² plays such a clever, smart game. Published to coincide with the London Olympics and the Diamond Jubilee, Eat London² shrewdly offers so much more than a guide to the capital’s great restaurants. Terence Conran and Peter Prescott recommend cafes, bakeries, fishmongers, butchers, food markets and — new to the guidebook game — pop-ups.

Atmospheric photographs by Lisa Linder and inventive recipes from the chefs of the restaurants featured, make this a good buy as a cookery book as well as a beautifully produced guidebook. As far as I’m concerned, it’s worth getting for Rowley Leigh’s recipe for Parmesan Custard and Anchovy Toast alone. Having eaten his exquisite signature concoction at Le Cafe Anglais I’ve puzzled ever since exactly how to replicate it.

Terence Conran and Peter Prescott proudly admit this isn’t an ‘objective’ book. It’s their idiosyncratic view of what makes a great restaurant — ‘quirkiness, wonderful personalities, service, ambience, design, location…’  With recommendations from Twickenham to Brick Lane and Stoke Newington to Southwark, as well as fold-out maps for new visitors to London, it’s a perfect example of what a guidebook should be: beautiful in its own right and full of insights, personality and insider knowledge.

Hazan Family Favorites By Giuliano Hazan, Foreword by Marcella Hazan

Published by Stewart Tabori & Chang

May 2012 Price £19.99

Last night my teenage daughter embarked on a complicated dough recipe without checking how long the various stages would take to complete. With school the next morning, she was in bed and fast asleep hours before the dough was finally ready. I promised to finish the baking for her, but at 1 am, still applying the glaze to the admittedly beautiful buns, I was wondering why she couldn’t have opted for a plain old Victoria sponge instead.

Getting your timings wrong isn’t a mistake Giuliano Hazan would let you make. Each of his recipes starts with a brisk ‘time from start to finish’ guide and the instructions are both simple and concise. It’s a book that is characterised by the calm, capable charm that must make him such a reassuring tutor at the cooking school in Verona that he runs with his wife, Lael.

Hazan Family Favorites is as much a tribute to family as it is to food, filled as it is with photographs of Giuliano as a boy, his mother Marcella, his daughters and his wife. Each recipe is accompanied by Giuliano’s memories of eating it as a child, or watching one of his grandmothers cook it. He has a heritage that’s rich in food influences. His paternal grandparents were Sephardic Jews who settled in Italy and then fled to the United States. His maternal grandparents brought the cuisine of the Emilia-Romagna to the table, along with Arab-influenced dishes from his grandmother’s time living in Egypt. The result is a style of cooking that is traditional and yet with a light, modern touch.

A test of any cookery book is do you want to head for the kitchen? I have an overwhelming desire to make Swiss Chard Tortelloni with Tomato sauce immediately. This is a book that I would give to someone who loves to cook, but who wants to become more confident and knowledgeable. At breakfast this morning, I presented my daughter with a plate of her time-consuming buns that I finally completed at 1.30 this morning, along with a copy of Hazan Family Favorites on the side. ‘Can you try cooking from this one next time?’ I asked.

I was brought up by the sea. I’m a comical swimmer and a bemused sailor, but give me a shoreline to walk along and I’m content. It’s the best of both worlds — feet on solid ground and eyes on the waves.

Foraging for wild ingredients turns a coastal walk into a glorious expedition. Depending on the season there’ll be handfuls of plumply purple blackberries, some salty samphire and, if you’re lucky, wild garlic leaves and flowers. Take your children, ask a friend, and between you, you’ll bring home a feast.

This weekend a great friend and I took a walk along a wooded coastal path and gathered enough garlic leaves and wild sea spinach to make soup and frittata, with more left over for risotto, garlic flower tempura and garlic leaf pesto.

Wild garlic flourishes in the shady woodland that hugs our wilder coastline. Unlike wild mushrooms which have a sinister way of pretending to be friendly when they’re psychotic murderers, wild garlic leaves are cheerily, perkily, reliably delicious. The plant may resemble poisonous lily of the valley, but you need only bury your nose in it to be enveloped in clouds of reassuringly pungent garlicky fragrance.

Sea beet is another reliable friend that bursts in florid clumps from the most inhospitable-looking pebbly beaches. It resembles wild green facial hair erupting from a stubbly chin and tastes very like spinach, but it has more sweetness and less sulky muddiness.

Sea beet and garlic leaves combine to make the most delicious and nourishing frittata, while a combination of wild garlic and watercress makes the kind of soup that would fortify the weariest traveller.

 WILD GARLIC AND WATERCRESS SOUP

Serves 4

• 200g wild garlic leaves
• 100g watercress
• 2 medium floury potatoes, diced
• 1 medium onion
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 litre vegetable stock

Sweat the onion in the olive oil until it’s soft, but not brown. Add the potato, season and stir briefly before adding the stock. Cook for around fifteen minutes until the potato is soft. Add the garlic leaves and watercress and simmer for no more than five minutes. You want to preserve the startling green colour without trespassing into the khaki zone.

Tip the soup into a food processor and whizz until smooth. Check the seasoning and serve with garlic flowers which are delicious in flavour.

WILD GARLIC AND SEA BEET FRITTATA WITH MUSHROOMS AND RICOTTA

Serves 6

• 1 large handful each of wild garlic leaves and sea beet
• 200g chestnut mushrooms
• 2 medium onions
• 4 tablespoons olive oil
• 125g ricotta
• 100g parmesan, grated
• 8 eggs

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C.

Blanch the garlic and sea beet leaves in boiling water for a generous minute until wilted and bright green. Plunge the leaves into cold water to stop cooking. Once cold, wring them out as though you were drying a towel and slice coarsely.

Using a large, non-stick frying pan that you can put in the oven later, saute the onions in 2 tablespoons of the olive oil. Once they’re soft and starting to turn golden add the mushrooms. Saute until the mushrooms are brown and soft. Take the pan off the heat.

Beat the eggs with a fork, add 50g of the parmesan and all of the ricotta and mix well. Season.

Drape the blanched, chopped leaves over the mushrooms and onions in the pan. Pour the egg and cheese mixture over the top, making sure that the leaves are submerged. Place the frying pan in the oven for 15 minutes until the top of the frittata is nicely brown. Allow to cool a little and then tip the frittata out onto a plate. Grate the remaining 50g of parmesan over the top and the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Serve with a green salad and some new potatoes.

I love everything about the seaside — from the wild shorelines of Orkney to the brash oddities of Bournemouth. Just don’t ask me to swim in it, sail on it or surf through it. I will though, at a pinch, paddle in it.

Crumpets and I have a long history. I wrote recently about childhood memories of my Great Auntie Susie’s plain, honest Lancashire hotpot. My great auntie cooked suppers of hotpot, ham salad and stew, with the occasional outburst of potato fritters or cherry pie. But my mum, who worked long hours, always made supper on Mondays. The food was exotic, glamorous and occasionally downright revolutionary (I’m thinking particularly of rhubarb soup, tried once and never repeated). Instead of  hotpot, she made risotto, chicken with white wine and asparagus, ginger cake with coffee cream filling.

There was no connection between the food we loved on Mondays and the recipes we enjoyed the rest of the week. The only overlap — food that appeared in both repertoires — was pickled beetroot, fish and chips… and crumpets.  There were sausages too, I suppose, but one version was charred to blackness, the other barely glanced the side of the pan.

Crumpets — my childhood crossover food — are perfect for grey days. They’re drilled with holes; deep canyons down which melted butter can dive. They’re very British — if you’ve never tried them, you really must. If you’ve tried them but never cooked them… you really, really must.

CRUMPETS

Makes around 10

You will need a non-stick frying pan with a lid and four non-stick 8cm cooking rings

• 225g plain flour
• 300ml warm water
• 150ml warm, semi skimmed milk
• 7g dried yeast
• 1tablespoon caster sugar
• Scant 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate soda

Sieve the flour into a bowl. Add the yeast to the warm water in a separate bowl and stir.

Add the milk and sugar to the yeast mixture and stir once again. Pour the mixed liquid into the centre of the flour and, with a whisk, gently combine the ingredients until you’re left with a smooth, runny batter. Allow the batter to rest for ten minutes and then add the salt and bicarbonate of soda. Stir them in and let your batter rest for a further ten minutes.

Place the non-stick pan on a moderate heat. Once it’s hot, place the  rings in the pan and ladle enough mixture in to reach the half-way mark.

Bubbles will form after about a minute. Put the lid over the pan and allow the crumpets to cook for around five minutes. By this time, the mixture will be just about set. Using a plastic spatula, flip the rings over. Push the crumpets down so that the tops of them are now touching the surface of the pan. Allow them to cook for a further minute, until they’re golden brown on top. Remove them from the pan and release them from the rings. Repeat the process until you’ve finished the batter. Either eat the crumpets straightaway with butter or save them for later, toasting them in the toaster to warm them through.

There was a daft phase in commercial bread-making, when a large manufacturer attempted to sell oblong-shaped crumpets. Anyone who’s been brought up on crumpets could have told them it was a terrible idea. I think of myself as someone who was brought up on crumpets not once but twice — on Mondays and every other day of the week too. If the bread factory had only asked me about rectangular crumpets, I could have saved them an awful lot of trouble.

Its startling colours and eccentric shape always remind me of the work of Joan Miro. ‘For me, an object is alive’, the Spanish artist once said. ‘I see a tree, I get a shock, as if it were something breathing, talking. A tree too is something human…’ Miro would have liked this crazy hair-cut of a plant. I feel sure it would have helped him with his work on the apparently impossible notion of four-dimensional art, since it’s a plant with just too much life, too much exuberance to be trapped by only three dimensions.

Being something of a picnic-obsessive, the flowering of what I think of as the ‘Miro plant’ is my signal for meals outside (although winter often brings good picnic opportunities too, for the thick-coat owner). I have a long repertoire of picnic recipes by now. But I’ve just devised this new one, in celebration of the Miro plant’s arrival.

CHICKPEA FLATBREADS WITH CHESTNUT MUSHROOMS, SMOKED MOZZARELLA AND TRUFFLE OIL

Serves 4

For the flatbreads

• 130g chickpea or gram flour
• 280ml water
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil

For the topping

• 500g chestnut mushrooms, sliced
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• Handful fresh thyme leaves
• Splash of olive oil
• Knob of butter
• Seasoning
• Trickle of truffle oil
• 1 ball of smoked mozzarella (plain mozzarella is good too, if you’re stuck)

Make the flatbread batter by whisking all the ingredients together and allowing to rest for at least two hours, or overnight if your prefer, covered. The mixture will make six flatbreads — two left over for the suggestion at the bottom of this recipe.

Heat a small, non stick frying pan/skillet on the hob until hot. Ladle in a spoonful of batter — about 1/6th of your mixture and enough to coat the pan — and cook on a high heat for 2 minutes, until the bottom of the flatbread has browned nicely. Flip it over with a spatula and cook the other side for a further one to two minutes. Repeat until you’ve used up all the batter. Stack up the flatbreads and turn to the mushrooms.

Melt the butter with the olive oil in a large frying pan over a medium heat. Add the mushrooms, garlic, thyme and seasoning and cook until the mushrooms are softly golden. Remove from the heat.

When ready to assemble your flatbreads, preheat your grill. Slice the smoked mozzarella and divide between the four flatbreads. Divide the mushrooms evenly too and pile on top of the mozzarella — you can do this neatly or casually, whichever method suits your patience and your aesthetics. Place the breads on a grill pan and grill until the mozzarella has become molten. Remove from the heat and trickle over a little truffle oil. Either eat them in the warmth of your kitchen, or fold them over and wrap them up ready for your picnic.

You will have two flatbreads left over — these are good spread with humous. They’re also delicious if you dip pieces into a little olive oil and then dab them into a mixture of crushed pistachios, cumin, sumac and salt.

Joan Miro was both inventive and revolutionary. He once said of his art that ‘the more local something is, the more it is universal’. The man who brought us searingly vivid lithographs, tapestries, paintings and sculptures also, as it turned out, devised the most perfect mantra for eating too. Local equals universal. Brilliant.

There’s something robustly fortifying about hotpot; essentially a slow-cooked casserole trapped beneath a layer of sliced potatoes. It’s about as dainty as a rhinoceros in ballet shoes, but if it’s comfort and nourishment you need, there’s nothing better.

I was brought up on Lancashire hotpot. My Great Auntie Susie made it at least once a week throughout my childhood. When I got my first BBC job as a reporter at Radio Manchester, I lived with my Grandpa in his immaculate little house just outside the city and he assumed hotpot duties. It was the time of the bitter coal miners’ strike and I spent most of my time reporting on the clashes between the opposing sides. Grandpa had once worked at the pits himself and was passionately partisan. Over a hotpot at his kitchen table he would fume over the fate of the pits and the miners.

I didn’t have enough money to buy a car — slightly compromising for a news reporter — but Grandpa, always generous, offered to drive me when I needed a lift. We made an unlikely pair, arriving at collieries and picket lines in his ancient Ford Cortina estate. Even when I worked the night shift, he’d turn up if I got stranded. Midnight, 2am, 3.30 am — he genuinely didn’t mind. And usually, when we got home, there would be a hotpot in the oven and maybe even a rice pudding.

The truth is that I didn’t really like hotpot that much. It was familiar, it was cheap and it was filling. But it was bland and dull.  My own version of hotpot isn’t one that Grandpa or my Auntie Susie would have recognised. It’s made with beef instead of lamb for a start and it’s rich with herbs, garlic and red wine and garnished with rosemary flowers and lemon zest.

Grandpa was the fussiest person I’ve ever known, although I think he would have liked this new incarnation of his familiar recipe. Both he and Auntie Susie would have been horrified by the rosemary flowers and lemon zest though, and would have dragged them methodically to the sides of their plates.

HOTPOT WITH HIGH KICKS

Serves 4

• 1kg good quality braising steak
• 4 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 medium onions, chopped medium fine
• 4 carrots, peeled and cut into roughly 2cm chunks
• 1 leek, sliced into roughly 2cm pieces
• 2 garlic cloves, sliced finely
• 1 400g tin chopped organic plum tomatoes
• Half bottle red wine
• 500ml vegetable stock
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 good handful fresh thyme leaves
• 3 tablespoons aged balsamic vinegar
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• Seasoning
• 3 or 4 waxy potatoes per person
• Handful rosemary flowers or finely chopped rosemary and zest of a lemon

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees C.

Season the meat and brown it with three tablespoons of the olive oil in a heavy-bottomed casserole or pan. You will need to do it in batches to make sure you brown it, rather than boil it. Remove the meat to a bowl and add the carrots, onions, leek and garlic to the pan. Saute the vegetables for five minutes until they start to take on a little colour. Keeping the vegetables in the pan, deglaze it by adding the red wine and stirring to remove all the goodness sticking to the bottom. Simmer for a couple of minutes and then add all the rest of the ingredients, browned meat included, apart from the potatoes, rosemary and lemon zest. Bring back to simmering point, cover and then place in the oven for around three  hours, but a little longer won’t do it any harm. Check on it after a couple of hours.

Remove from the oven. The meat will be tender, melting and delicious but you will most likely need to reduce the sauce a little. Place the pan, uncovered, on a gentle to moderate heat on the hob. Once the sauce is a rich, silky consistency, check the seasoning.

While the sauce is reducing, boil the potatoes in their skins for 15 minutes. While still warm, remove the skins and slice the potatoes. Either place the slices on top of the meat in the casserole dish, or divide the beef into individual bowls and cover with potato. Season the potatoes, brush with the remaining tablespoon of olive oil and place back in the hot oven for 15 more minutes. Traditionally the potatoes would have been added raw at the very start of cooking. This method gives the poor old potatoes less of a bashing. Serve the hotpot with a scattering of rosemary and lemon zest.

Whichever version of this old classic you choose, the beauty of a hotpot is that it will sit happily in the oven for hours at a time, just waiting to spring out and do a song and dance routine. A bit like Grandpa, really.

In the league table of celebrated plays that should never be performed on stage, Shakespeare’s gruesome Titus Andronicus has to come top. But I’ve always thought Pirandello’s 1921 play Six Characters in Search of an Author may be up there too. His opening night audience in Rome yelled ‘manicomio’ or ‘madhouse’ throughout the performance and the humiliated Pirandello had to slip out of a side door.

The play’s eccentric premise is this: a rehearsal is taking place on stage when six half-written characters barge into the theatre demanding to be allowed to act out their drama. The bewildered Director gives in and the bizarre event concludes with a drowning and a suicide. This weekend I’m seeing it on stage for the very first time, so I’ll let you know if it’s performable or not.

I love a good postmodern experiment, in food as well as literature. So when I had a whim to make lemongrass and lemon thyme ice-cream, it struck me that this might be my Pirandello moment. Great concept, madhouse in reality? Or daft idea, sublime result? Would my six ice-cream ingredients make for the perfect performance or would I be forced out of the kitchen, pursued by members of my family waving rolling pins and shouting ‘manicomio maniac’?

LEMONGRASS AND LEMON THYME ICE-CREAM WITH TUILE BISCUITS AND MANGO MILKSHAKE — OR SIX INGREDIENTS IN SEARCH OF A RECIPE

For the ice-cream

• 1 cup semi skimmed milk
• 2 cups double cream
• 3/4 cup caster sugar
• 6 large egg yolks (you can use the whites for the biscuits)
• Three handfuls of fresh lemon thyme, including the soft stalks
• 2 bulbs of fresh lemongrass, bruised with a rolling pin and sliced finely

For the biscuits

• 2 egg whites
• 60g softened unsalted butter (I like Lescure butter best)
• 1/2 cup plain flour
• 1/2 cup caster sugar
• Finely grated zest of a lemon

For the mango milkshake

• Slightly overripe Alphonso mangoes or 1 tin Alphonso mango pulp. The exquisite, perfumed fruit are in season in April, but if you can’t find any, the tinned pulp is exceptionally good
• Equal quantities of ice-cold semi skimmed milk

To make the ice-cream, combine the milk, sugar, 1 cup of the cream, the thyme and the lemongrass. Warm it through until hot, but not boiling. Take off the heat, cover and allow the flavours to infuse for around an hour and a half.

Once the cream has infused, whisk the egg yolks. Still whisking, pour a little of the warm cream mixture into the bowl. Add a little more, whisking all the while, and then pour the tempered eggs back into the pan containing the rest of the cream mix.

Put the pan back on a gentle to medium heat and continue to stir until the mixture becomes custard-like and coats the back of a wooden spoon. Add the remaining cup of cream and pour the whole lot into a cold bowl. Once cooled completely, strain the mixture into your ice-cream maker and churn it.

To make the biscuits, whisk the egg whites very lightly and combine with the other ingredients. Pour a little of the batter into well-buttered fairy cake tins or larger tartlet tins if you prefer. I used tartlet tins approximately 12 cm in diameter which produced 9 biscuits. Bake at 200 degrees C for around 5 minutes. Remove from the oven and ease the biscuits gently out of the tins with a plastic knife.

To make the mango milkshake, combine equal quantities of mango puree and ice-cold milk. If you feel that an authentic milkshake needs a few bubbles, froth it with a milk frother.

After I laid on my first night performance of Six Ingredients in Search of a Recipe, my son — who’s no pushover — announced that it’s now his number one favourite ice-cream. And this from a teenager who would happily eat my chocolate and peanut butter ice-cream seven days a week. The flavour of the ice-cream is perfumed and creamy, with a subtle and delicate promise of lemon. The mango is the perfect counterbalance and the biscuit provides a much needed element of crunch.

Manicomio or paradise? Try it and let me know.

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.

]]> http://eggsontheroof.com/blood-orange-fennel-salad-pontack-vinaigrette/feed/ 16 http://eggsontheroof.com/miss-galindos-canape/ http://eggsontheroof.com/miss-galindos-canape/#comments Fri, 10 Feb 2012 14:07:42 +0000 Eggs On The Roof http://eggsontheroof.com/?p=1944 Continue reading →]]>

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.

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.

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.