Food Explorer

I appreciate that anyone who knows anything about the arcane art of Marmalade making will be shouting "fraud" at their computer as they wonder how I'm managing to make Marmalade at the end of October when everybody knows that Seville oranges are only available in the UK in February.  I'm not.  This was made with perfect seasonality in February last year and as I may have mentioned elsewhere on this blog that I am posting some old and favourite foodie rambling to give a bit of back-story.  I don't know how I had forgotten about this one.  If I manage to find Seville oranges early next year, I shall post that little adventure too.

This is, rather bizarrely, my most viewed photograph on Flickr.....I've never been sure why!.

The instructions are from the ever reliant Delia Smith, whose recipes never fail to delight and fulfill.

Makes six 1 lb (350 ml capacity) jars

Ingredients
2 lb (900 g) Seville oranges
1 lemon
4 lb (1.8 kg) granulated sugar (to speed the dissolving, this can be warmed in the oven)

You will also need a preserving pan or a large, heavy-based saucepan; a 9 inch (23 cm) square of muslin (or gauze); some string; a funnel; and six 1 lb (350 ml capacity) jars, sterilised.

Begin by measuring 4 pints (2.25 litres) water into a preserving pan, then cut the lemon and oranges in half and squeeze the juice out of them. Add the juice to the water and place the pips and any bits of pith that cling to the squeezer on the square of muslin (laid over a dish or cereal bowl first). Now cut the orange peel into quarters with a sharp knife, and then cut each quarter into thinnish shreds. As you cut, add the shreds to the water and any pips or spare pith you come across should go on to the muslin. The pith contains a lot of pectin so don't discard any and don't worry about any pith and skin that clings to the shreds – it all gets dissolved in the boiling.

Now tie the pips and pith up loosely in the muslin to form a little bag, and tie this on to the handle of the pan so that the bag is suspended in the water. Then bring the liquid up to simmering point and simmer gently, uncovered, for 2 hours or thereabouts until the peel is completely soft (test a piece carefully by pressing it between your finger and thumb). Meanwhile, chill the saucers in the freezer compartment of the fridge.

Next, remove the bag of pips and leave it to cool on a saucer. Then pour the sugar into the pan and stir it now and then over a low heat, until all the crystals have dissolved (check this carefully, it's important). Now increase the heat to very high and squeeze the bag of pips over the pan to extract all of the sticky, jelly-like substance that contains the pectin. As you squeeze you'll see it ooze out. You can do this by placing the bag between two saucers or using your hands. Then stir or whisk it into the rest.

As soon as the mixture reaches a really fast boil, start timing. Then after 15 minutes spoon a little of the marmalade on to one of the cold saucers from the fridge, and let it cool back in the fridge. You can tell – when it has cooled – if you have a 'set' by pushing the mixture with your little finger: if it has a really crinkly skin, it is set. If not, continue to boil the marmalade and give it the same test at about 10-minute intervals until it does set.

After that remove the pan from the heat (if there's a lot of scum, most of it can be dispersed by stirring in half a teaspoon of butter, and the rest can be spooned off). Leave the marmalade to settle for 20 minutes.

In the meantime, the jars should be washed, dried and heated in a moderate oven for 5 minutes. Pour the marmalade, with the aid of a funnel or a ladle, into the jars, cover with waxed discs and seal while still hot. Label when cold and store in a dry, cool, dark place.

This is non Delia - I added some Drambuie to some jars and some deeply smoky Laphroaig whisky to others, just poured a slosh into the top of each jar before sealing.  Very nice it was too!

Then hurry up and make some toast to try some!

The River Cafe Blue book has a very firm hold on both my heart and my stomach.  I think it was one of the first 'trendy' cookery book I ever bought.  I was deep into my chef training (which led to a very short and un-glamorous career) and obsessed with food and cooking, I think more than ever. The utterly captivating television series by Rose and Ruth had just been aired and was one of the most exciting food programs I'd ever seen.  I wanted to cook everything they did and I wanted desperately to eat their seemingly simple food.  Italian food is a funny one, the recipes are so simple and straightforward and yet so many people just can't do it, the food is tastless, or it's overly pushy, the pasta's always soggy and everything is too oily.  These people had it just right.  So I forked out the £25 for the Blue Book and headed home to my little kitchen to do Italian.

I've always had a passion for vegetables, while nowhere near being of the vegetarian persuasion, I could quite happily dine on my own veggie dishes for some time, or until Peter brings a chunk of lamb home and I cave in.  I think that one of the first dishes I ever cooked from this book was the Marinated Grilled Vegetables (page 142), looking at the book now, I see it's open pages are splattered with the juice of red peppers, and splashes of oil and other long forgotten debris.  This is one of those glorious recipes which are blindingly simple to pull off if you have some time, lots of delicious veg and an appetite or some appreciative friends due in a few hours time.  It's dead simple, with aubergine, courgette, red peppers, olive oil, lemon juice, garlic and basil leaves.  I adore the long process of skinning peppers, whether it's the burning over an open flame method or the turn the grill up to the highest and blacken them method it always feels slightly dangerous, like it's never going to work.  The skins go so black and by the time they emerge from their little clingfilmed cage, cool and ready to be skinned, they feel too hard to be tasty, it's almost impossible to imagine the juicy, moist flesh hiding inside that hard black shell.  I love the process of peeling off the black and revealing the red, oranges and yellows and all the beautiful juice which I try to capture to make the marinade even more tasty.   It's one of those dishes where there are never any leftovers!

Another delicious vegetarian dish is the Mushroom Risotto (page 104 - also well patterned with splashes!).  I have friends who ask me to make this for them, it's so good.  All it uses are basic flat field mushrooms and dried porcini, lashings of oil, garlic, Parmesan and butter.  I'm lucky as my dining room and kitchen are just one big room, so when I retreat to stir for 20 minutes, I'm never left on my own or out of the conversation, which means that I'll often make a risotto when we have company.  Sometimes I like to remove myself from the hubbub and retreat to my end of the room and just stir and ladle and have a little breather from being sociable.  Occasionally someone will potter over to have a nosy, perhaps to top up my glass or to offer a helping hand.  The wine is always accepted and the offer of help politely refused.  If I wanted my friends to help with the cooking, I wouldn't be inviting them round, we'd be at a restaurant instead.

Another much requested dish is the Spagehetti al Linonne (page 86) which uses vast quantities of lemon juice and Parmesan which miraculously combine to form a creamy sauce for the spaghetti.  Possibly one of the simplest, freshest and most tasty of pasta dishes.

I went through a phase one winter when I cooked Ribollita (page36) every week as I became addicted to it!  It's a classic peasant soup of beans, cavolo nero and stale bread.  The first couple of times I didn't use the bread as I rarely have stale ciabatta loaves in my kitchen and I'm not very keen on slimy cooked bread.  Then one time I did have the bread and it did change the dish, but it's also delicious, if not authentic, without.

I'm not really a cook who enjoys making puddings, but feeling brave one day I attempted the Crosate di Limone (Lemon Tart, page 286) and I don't know if it was the recipe or me, but I stirred filling mixture for about an hour and there was no sign of it setting, and it's only now, years later, that I will confess to adding cornflour in desperation.  It worked perfectly an the finished tart was yummy and very, very rich.

It's only now, having had this very enjoyable nostalgic moment leafing through my book and my memories, that I am amazed that every single one of my favourite recipes are vegetarian.......

I've been lucky enough to eat at The River Cafe twice, one for a summer lunch for my mother's birthday and the other a winter supper with friends about the leave us for America.  Both meals were spectacular and very expensive, but the food was wonderful, the service charming and the overall experience worth every single of the many pounds.

Click for Flickr

We finally got around to buying some fish from the massive fish counter at the Arndale Market, I really didn’t know what to choose from the wonderful array of fishiness. I’m not really one for delicate pan frying and so I went for the monkfish as I know that it’s nice and robust and can take a good strong sauce. I didn't have a recipe which tickled my taste buds so I just made this up.

Here’s how to do it.

Finely chop a couple of onions

Locate as much garlic as you like, I also had masses of lovely fresh bay leaves and sage which had been kindly donated by a friend in with a bountiful garden.

Soften the onions, garlic and herbs in as little olive oil as you can get away with (if you are being healthy, if not, glug in lots!) and chuck in a cinnamon stick for luck. Cook slowly without browning until soft and translucent.

Open two tins of chopped tomatoes, or use fresh ripe ones if you're lucky enough to grow them, add some tomato concentrate for sweetness and a shake of sweet (or hot) pimenton for a lovely smoky note.

Cook uncovered until it looks thickens up and looks well amalgamated and the tomato tastes sweet. You can always add a little sugar if it’s not quite there and you’re in a hurry.

Fillet, skin and remove the black membrane from your monkfish. Pat dry with kitchen paper.

Pan fry the fillets in a little olive oil until slightly browned, or to your taste.

Cut the browned fillets into nice sized chunks and add to the sauce, stir in gently and leave to cook through, it won't take long.

At the last minute add some chopped soft herbs, I used fresh flat leaf parsley and threw in a few caper berries for a nice vinegary hit.

Sloe Gin, originally uploaded by multum in parvo.

I was given a bin liner full of prickly sloes by a generous friend whose larder is already groaning under the weight of home made goodies.

She said “it’s really easy, but takes a while”. No kidding.

So this is what you need.
Sloe berries
Small, sharp poking implement
Caster sugar
Gin – lots of gin
Kilner jars, or other large containers, sterilized
Patience
Entertainment.

Settle down at a large table, empty out your bin liner of spiky fruits; put the radio on because you’re going to be here for a while.

Pluck the sloes from the branches, trying no to puncture yourself in the process, they are very sharp. I didn’t bother with any which were obviously mouldy or squishy, but I did include them if they were split.

Discarding the branches once the berries are off makes the whole thing a bit neater and it’s encouraging to see the massive heap grow smaller.

Once all the sloes are in a bowl together looking lovely, clear your table of spiders, leaves and other creepy crawlies which will be looking to make a home for themselves in yours.

Leave the sloes in some cold water and wait for all the leaves, twigs and corpses to rise to the surface and remove.

Try to scrape the welded on purple sloe stickyness from your hands and under your fingernails (mine stayed put for about two days).

Drain the berries and when you can face it, sit back at the table, with more entertainment and ideally a darning needle, although I can’t think of one single person I know who would actually possess such an object. I used a cocktail stick.

Laboriously remove each sloe, one by one, individually, by itself, from the glistening purple pile and poke with your little wooden stick, lovingly place in a clean bowl. Repeat about 20,000 times until your back aches, your fingers are stiff and sticky and you consider breaking into the three bottles of gin luring you to their shelf.

Take a deep breath, have a walk, have some chocolate, watch CSI.

Finish stabbing the sloes.

Now the science bit – you need 1-2oz of castor sugar for each pint of gin, more if you like it sweeter and less if you like it dryer. I have no idea how I like it so I used about 1.75 oz if I did the calculations right. These quantities are from the BBC website, blame them not me if it’s horrible. It’s my first time and I trust them…..

Sterilize the containers by putting through the dishwasher, heating in the oven or pouring in boiling water.

Drive down the road to replace the jar you have just cracked by pouring boiling water into it and repeat the process with slightly less than boiling water and placing a long metal spoon in the jar, just as your mother always told you to do.

Continue.

With great satisfaction, carefully pour the sloes into your first container, watch out for them rolling all over the floor as they make a terrible mess when you tread on them and walk them around the rest of the room on the bottom of your shoe.

Measure and pour one pint of gin onto the berries and then add however much sugar you’ve decided to use in too. Give it all a bit of a mix around and continue adding gin and sugar to the berries until all are covered in all of your containers. Leaving a little space at the top of the container makes mixing easier.

Seal the containers and hope that the seals work better than mine did. If they don’t, mop up the gin which will squirt out from under the ‘waterproof’ seals and top up again.

Keep in a dark, cool cupboard for three months, turning every couple of days initially and then less frequently later on so that the sugar is evenly distributed. Don’t wait for longer than six months to decant, it won’t benefit from longer.

If you haven’t forgotten about them in three months time, strain the berries from the sweet, pungent, purple gin and rebottle into sterilized bottles (don’t forget the spoon if using the hot water method), add a few sloes to the bottle for artistic effect and keep some for adding to casseroles. Wrap prettily as gifts or hide at the back of the cupboard and keep for yourself.