The Greasy Spoon | It's not just about Haute Cuisine...

Literary Boiled Eggs: A Winner is Announced

 

 

 

A big thank you to all those kind people who took the time (and bother) to enter The Greasy Spoon "Literary Boiled Eggs" competition. To remind you: I asked readers to describe the art of boiling an egg, but in the style of their favourite writer. The prize is a copy of Grub Street's "A Taste of Portugual". 

The standard of entries was high. There were some cracking efforts. Honourable mentions must go to Will "Worm" Sterling for his "hard-boiled" pastiche of the crime writer, Jame Ellroy; Nick Good for his flamboyant interpretation of a Dorian Gray style kitchen bust-up, and Jody Porter for his elegant take on the poetry of William Carlos Williams. 

But we have a clear winner. Please step forward one Katrina Dixon. Of all the entries, hers was the one which most clearly identified with the spirit of Greasy Spoonery. I also happen to be a fan of Edgar Allan Poe's creepy short story, The Black Cat- so I'm biased.

 

Edgar Allan Poe's How To Boil An Egg

 

I cannot conceive of how I first thought of it, but in the hours between midnight and dawn a perverse notion came to haunt me. True, the disease had seized hold of my senses like a demon - but oh, what a demon! A fiend of gourmet tastes! Hark, let me tell you!

You may fancy me mad, but madmen know nothing of breakfast. As the first pale light of dawn dissolved the nightmares of the night - oh, what a night! - I slipped into the kitchen - as dank and fearful a place as ever I have beheld. A gloom descended over me, agitated by a faint shivering. I had not worn my slippers. I ventured towards the cooker, eggbox in one hand, took one egg - one brown, speckled egg - and placed it quickly in the saucepan of cold water. I could not look. Why, I cannot say. A great fear overtook me, as if in this saucepan, this metal beast, my own wretched heart lay, rather than a simple egg.

I regained my composure - I was not mad! Yet at the moment of lighting the gas burner my weak frame shuddered. Such a flame as might have come from hell! My hands shook, and my fingers went tapping of their own accord, tap-tap-tapping on the counter - no! no more tapping! - as I waited for the water to boil. I dared not breathe. And then - a shriek such as only the damned might offer overtook me - the water had boiled!

Two minutes and the egg would be boiled. Boiled such that I could depart this loathsome place and be done with this distasteful task. But that noise - barely audible at first - was increasing with every second. Louder it arose and yet louder. How could anyone bear it? This ungodly spluttering of boiling water. This sinister bubbling. When would it stop! A great rage suddenly filled me and I fell to my knees, praying for anything to drown this noise. Anything would be better than this fateful agony! Louder - louder still - the infernal noise would not abate! No, I must scream - I must surely die!

I do not know what I might have done had the egg-timer not announced its shrill desist at that very point of my unravelling, yet it did. The terror was over. The deed was done. The egg was boiled!

 

The Black Rice of Venus

 

 

 

 

My latest discovery: Venus Black Rice. Originally Chinese, Italian black rice comes from the Po valley, and I gather is a relatively recent concept; the result of a noble collaboration between a co-operative of Northern Italian rice growers and a Chinese hybridisation specialist (were you aware that there was such a thing?) 

Yesterday, I made myself a simple working lunch using the remains of a packet of Riso Venere from the Sala Cereali Company of Sondrio. You can cook it very much like a risotto. The rice turns a deep purple- indeed the colour of Roman Emperors- and releases a highly fragrant starch. It's delicious.

If you cook it in a good fish stock, it's almost hard to believe that this rice hasn't been cooked in deepest black, rich squid ink. It would work brilliantly with cuttlefish, squid, octopus and the like. Highly recommended.

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The Chervil Revolution

 

 

I'm going to suggest that we start a Chervil Revolution. For some reason it's quite hard to find chervil in Britain- unlike in France. And I really don't know why, as the plug I bought from a herb nursery a month or two ago is now flourishing in our London town garden- which means semi-shade, pollution and pesky cats.

The secret- as with many herbs- is to re-plant it in a pot full of free-draining, slightly poor stony soil. I bought some grit from our local garden centre and mixed it into standard compost (adding a handful of sand, too). Until I discovered this, all my herb plants used to die a grizzly, wintery death swamped in cold, wet, water-logged compost. Follow my method and you'll have them growing away in no time at all- our tarragon is going beserk! Topping out helps too (especially if you're in the semi-shade and your plants get a bit straggly reaching for the light). This just means snipping away at the top as the plant grows. But you're going to be doing this anyway, you're a cook.

Why do I like chervil so much? It tastes like a sophisticated cross between two of my all-time favourite herbs, dill and parsley. It's got a very subtle aniseedy taste, and visually, looks like those delicate green feathery tops you find on carrots. It's brilliant with fish. Watirose might just sell it in those little plastic bags. Don't think anyone else does, so why not grow your own?

And last, but not least, my new website is now up and running. You can have a look at: http://www.lukehoney.co.uk. There's a new blog on the site too (you'll find it under "inspiration") so if you're interested in architecture, design, interiors, antiques and the like, please go and have a look at it when you've got a spare moment.

 

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Mireille Johnston

 

 

I've had fun re-watching some of the programmes from Keith Floyd's "Floyd on France". This was a brilliant (and intelligent) television series made during the 1980's, exploring the regional cooking of France. It made the radical innovation of filming in real-life kitchens, in real time; a sort of antithesis to the likes of Auntie Delia and the scary Mrs Cradock. Floyd's anarchic antics were, of course, very amusing too. But, oh, what a contrast "Floyd in France" makes with the formulaic, yoof-orientated rubbish peddled on the television (or computer screens) of today!

 

 

 

 

Which suddenly reminded me of Mireille Johnston and her French Cookery Course. I had forgotten all about her. In her BBC television series from the early 90's, Mireille comes across as a dishy and sophisticated French housewife, with a drop-dead sexy accent that will break your heart- a lip smackin' mid-life male fantasy. In reality, she was a dishy- and sophisticated- academic; a Fulbright scholar, and translator; she held a doctorate in comperative literature and taught at Yale. In her "Cook's Tour of France", like Floyd, she travelled across the regions of France investigating the local food and sharing the secrets of various Michelin starred restaurants. I'm sure that if we had ever met, I would have liked her. A Lot.

Her book was published by the BBC in two volumes. I bought the first yonks ago and, to my chagrin now, barely looked at it. But it was still there at the back of the shelf- a little yellow in places, slightly dusty and tired, but crying out to be used and loved. And what a terrific book it is!  As I get older, I'm really coming to the conclusion that the simple and classic food of the cuisine bourgeoise is The Way Forward for home cooks.

So far, I've made Poule au Pot Farcie (Poached chicken with a chicken liver and spinach stuffing), Poulet au Vinaigre (chicken with vinegar and cucumber), Marmite Dieppoise (creamy mixed fish and seafood flavoured with curry), and Salmon aux Lentilles (salmon with lentils). I love the integrity, simplicity and relative sophistication of local French food. Incidentally, the Salmon with Lentils dish could easily be rustled up as an after-work thing; it's essentially a pan-fried salmon filet served with a creamy lentil sauce.

Mireilles' recipes are easy to make, work brilliantly, don't require strange ingredients and look beautiful on the plate. But I am of course, typing the obvious. All these classic recipes have been handed down from generation to generation, and have been tried, tested, discussed, argued over and refined over many, many, many years. They smack of authenticity. How different from today's so-called celebrity cook books, rushed out for the Christmas market, peppered with mistakes, so often leaving you slightly disappointed; with over-complicated recipes that don't really work. 

Mireille Johnston's Complete Cookery Course is currently being peddled on amazon for a penny. I've posted up two videos of Mireille from youtube. If you're a subscriber you may have to have a look at The Greasy Spoon via your web-browser to see them.

 

 

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Literary Boiled Eggs: A Greasy Spoon Competition

 

 

 

Thinking about it, I don't think I've ever held a competition on The Greasy Spoon before, which is stupid of me, I know. And about time too, I hear you mutter. So in the noble interest of experimentation I've come up with a slightly wacky idea. I have no idea if it's going to work or not: I'm either going to be besieged with brilliant submissions, or I'll be facing the embarrassing ordeal of having to admit that I've not a single reply.

Here's the competition: I want you to write a recipe. It's a simple one- It's "How to Boil an Egg". But there's a twist. I want you to write it in the style of a well-known writer or author. It could be anyone or anything: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Mary Shelley, Dennis Wheatley, Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust, Barbara Cartland, The Sun newspaper or even the Court Circular. It doesn't really matter. To get you going, here are two examples I thought up this morning over breakfast:

 

 

" To Sherlock Holmes, it was always that egg. On a stormy night- an especially tempestuous event in the autumn of 1888- I returned to my well-remembered chambers, seized with a keen desire to see my old friend, Mr Sherlock Holmes again. The vile wind howled in the hearth, and the windows rattled with the fury of the equinoxical gales. Holmes held out an egg to me with his long, nervous, nicotined-stained fingers.

" A fascinating observation, Watson", said he, lighting a cigarette. "It is simplicity itself. Take this egg- you will observe that this specimen has a brown shell. It was a simple deduction. You will recollect our brief sojourn in Mrs Hudson's pantry this morning. I noticed immediately that this particular egg was speckled with a panoply of coloured spots. It was the only egg in the box with this queer colouring, akin in many ways to the colour of that Piccadilly mud I had previously observed splashed, in fragments, on to those turn-up cuffs of your trousers last week. The remaining eggs- and you will observe that there are five of them- are, indeed, of a lighter hue, hence my double deduction."

He chuckled to himself and threw the egg into a pan, having- in a most fastidious fashion- removed the shell with his nimble yellow-stained fingers. "Pray, take note Watson, that I have raised the water temperature to a precise one hundred and one degrees".

I expressed wonder at my friend's erudition. "How long will it take to cook?" I remarked, laughing at the ease in which he carried out his work. "Two and a half minutes, precisely" he cried, a glint of triumph in his eye. "When I hear you explain, I replied, 'the whole thing seems so ridiculously simple, that I must confess to being baffled as to how you come up with your reasoning". Holmes threw back his head and laughed: "A mere trifle, my dear Watson." I raised an eyebrow. "Elementary", said he."

 

(With apologies to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

 

And here's another one, with apologies to Ian Fleming:

 

"The steam and smell and heat of a kitchen is nauseating at seven o' clock in the morning. To James Bond, life was, indeed, a bitch. Ignoring his hangover, he stretched out for his twelve-and-a-half inch, burnt orange, enamel saucepan with its egg-matic, multi-porous, teflon surface which says Le Creuset.

Bond liked to have a good breakfast. But you never knew what they put in their eggs, these days. M had warned him about this only last night during a game of contract bridge at Blade's. Bond re-assessed his egg with suspicion. Could it contain the salmonella virus, genus motile entobacteria?

He looked at the egg with a new respect. A speckled brown special laid by that pretty little Marans hen, a real doll of a girl with the 32 Double D bust he'd had flown in from Goldfinger the previous morning. What to make of it all?

With a studied indifference, Bond let the egg slip between his fingers. The gambit succeeded. So! He'd let May, his trusty Scottish housekeeper clear it up tomorrow, though there was certainly going to be one hell of a mess to pay for later. Bond shrugged. He wasn't going to let SMERSH get away with that one!"

Please email your entries to me at luke@lukehoney.co.uk by the 3rd May. I'll be posting a brand new copy of Grub Street's excellent Taste of Portugual to the winner. Any other amusing pastiches sent to me will also, of course, be posted up on The Greasy Spoon. Good Luck!

 

Butter Beans with Bacon, Chili and Red Pepper

 

 

 

Here's another simple after-work supper thing  I invented last night. I'll say it myself, this was utterly delicious and I would make it again without hesitation. It's vaguely Southern in influence- but more about that in another post.

Chop up a handful of shallots and sweat them in butter and oil. Next, add chopped up bacon bits. I'm currently rather keen on the slightly tacky American bacon, Oscar Mayer, produced by that sinister corporation, Kraft- it's the sort of bacon you get in diners. I'm sure it's been chemically dried, cured, or treated in some way, as it's guaranteed to go crispy every time you can cook it. You can almost eat it raw too, a bit like cured ham.

Add some finely diced red peppers and a minced red chili or two to the mix. Next, drain a tin of butter beans and add to the pan. If you can be bothered to cook fresh butter beans before hand, so much the better- but I do find that tinned (and pre-cooked) beans and pulses are really almost as good as the dried version, if not, to be frank, the same. Isn't it a case of the Emperor's New Clothes here?

Add a nugget of butter, warm through, and set aside. Make a simple dressing: a teaspoon of white sugar, a splash of sherry or white wine vinegar and lots of lovely groundnut oil, sea salt and white pepper. Spoon the dressing over the bean mixture and garnish with finely chopped spring onions and flat-leafed parsley.

Check the seasoning. I sprinkled over a teaspoon of my latest discovery; a dried sweet smoked paprika, thyme and garlic mix which you can buy in small plastic tubs from the dreaded Sainsbury's. These flavours work brilliantly together. Another thing I can eat raw, in Neanderthal fashion straight from the container; it's finger lickin' divine.

I thought this dish was especially good. The sweetness of the red peppers, dressing and chili contrast nicely with the buttery beans and the crunchy, raw, but finely chopped spring onions and the salty, smoky bacon. You could, of course, serve it cold, but I think your guests might prefer it if it was gently warmed through.

 

 

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Hot Cross Buns

 

 

 

I haven't as yet got my head around the idea that Easter is almost upon us. I love Easter; it should be like Christmas, but without the hassle. I've got a thing too about Hot Cross Buns: the combination of creamy butter, sweet rasins and yeasty dough have a Proustian effect, bringing back memories of Easters past- when, at least, it was bright, fresh and almost warm. Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah. How memory plays tricks.

Hot Cross Buns are one of those traditional dishes whose origins have been lost in the mists of antiquity. The "crosses" were supposedly meant to ward off evil spirits, and the buns, apparently, were banned by the Protestant church for Popery. You eat them on Good Friday.

Here's the recipe, adapted from Sara Paston-William's definitive book, "Christmas and Festive Day Recipes":

Mix up half a pint of milk and water, and warm it up to blood heat. Stir in 22g of fresh yeast, let the mixture get frothy and let it stand for ten minutes.

Sieve 450g plain flour, a teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of mixed spice,a teaspoon of cinnamon, and some grated nutmeg into a mixing bowl. Stir in 50g of caster sugar. Rub in 50g butter with your fingers. Make a well in the flour mix, pour in the yeasty milk, two beaten eggs, and 175g of currants. Mix it all up to make a dough. Use your hands!

Turn the dough onto a floured board, and knead it with your hands until the dough is elastic. Place it in a warm, greased bowl; sprinkle with flour, and cover with a kitchen towel. If you leave it in a warmish place, the dough should rise.

Once it has doubled in size (this might take over an hour), knock it down, and leave it to rise again for another half an hour. Form the dough into smallish buns. Reserve some of the dough, and roll it out flat. Cut the dough into strips, and place on the top of each bun to form a cross. Set them aside to rest for about fifteen minutes.

Bake them in a pre-set oven at 425F (220C). It might be a good plan to place a tin of water at the bottom of the oven to create a steamy atmosphere. After twenty minutes, the buns should be cooked.

Finish the buns off with a sugar glaze. This is just sugar-water which you have boiled rapidly to form a syrup. Once the syrup is thick enough (and very slightly brown), brush it over the buns.

 

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Prawn and Leek Rice Salad with Fennel

 

 

In the spirit of creativity and experimention, I've come up with this idea for a simple, but I hope, delicious rice salad. It would be briliant for a summer buffet, or served as a side dish. I know it's not exactly summer yet- or even really spring: as I write I'm looking out on to a cold, wet and miserable London Saturday morning.

I was playing around with flavour combinations the other day, and discovered that prawn and leeks make an excellent match when combined with the aniseedy tastes of fennel. Here's how to make it:

Chop up some leeks (giviing them a rinse and removing the tougher outer skin bits first) and sweat them gently in a saucepan with some butter. It's probably going to work best if the leeks are chopped up into small pieces. I also find that leeks go brown very quickly, so you need to watch these like a hawk. Try and keep that lovely, fresh verdant green colour. You could of course parboil the leeks first (plunging them very quickly into boiling water and rinsing off under a freezing cold tap) which should help to set the colour. 

Into the hot pan goes some fennel seeds and then some good quality prawns. I used smallish frozen prawns, which, of course, are pre-cooked, so just need heating through after they have been defrosted. Check the seasoning and add sea salt and black pepper. Set to one side.

Boil rice in the usual way. I used Uncle Ben's Long Grain rice, which has had the starch removed, and won't go mushy. This is a good thing. Combine the rinsed rice with the leeks, prawn and fennel seeds. Mix in a simple vinagrette (a third olive oil, groundnut oil, a splash of wine or cider vinegar or lemon juice could be just the ticket) and serve cold. A garnish ('orrible word!) of chopped dill would work well with the fish and fennel.

 

 

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Particular Delights

 

 

I'm very aware that I haven't written anything since last month. Having said that, I'm not especially keen on the blogger who only posts sporadically, with accompanying gushy excuses about "being incredibly busy" and "life is hectic". You will know the type. It's a bit like people who are late for meetings complaining about the "awful traffic". In Soho, Covent Garden or St James's.

But this time, I have a proper excuse: I've been working for the last six months on my new online decorative antiques shop (www.lukehoney.co.uk). I don't normally plug my "other life" on The Greasy Spoon, but this time I'm going to. Unashamedly. It's currently a holding page, although you can quite easily log on, and sign up for my regular newsletter. I'm expecting the site to go officially live over the next few days.

Although I'm currently known in the business as a specialist in antique games (you know the sort of thing- ivory chess sets, leather backgammon boards, eighteenth century gambling chips, mah jong, interesting antique roulette wheels) I'm also going to be dealing in other Country House goodies: Regency reverse glass mezzotints, Fornasetti, Modern British paintings and prints, Gothic revival furniture, old ikats, Chinese blue and white ceramics, convex Empire mirrors, library ladders, vintage globes, fascinating old medical charts. There's going to be a blog too, linked to the site. A new blog on antiques, architecture, design and the like; anything that grabs me- and as you've probably worked out by now, I've got eclectic interests.

In the meantime, back to the food- and long may that continue. Grub Street very kindly sent me an advance copy of Nathalie Hambro's Particular Delights through the post. I'm a big fan of Grub Street. They publish foodie authors of interest, and I love the quality of their production: lovely smooth, creamy paper; well sewn bindings, soothing typography, tasteful illustrations.

Particular Delights was first published in 1981 and won the Glenfiddich Award for food writing, and it's been a favourite on my bookshelf for some time now. Some of Nathalie Hambro's recipes are a bit weird, (I seem to remember a scrambled egg studded with kidney beans, and a celery and banana salad), but that would be missing the point; the book is stunningly original. I like the sound of Grape and Radish salad (sliced radishes, black and white grapes, bound in a yoghurt and dill dressing) and Smoked Oysters steamed in Vine Leaves (vine leaves stuffed with ricottta cheese, smoked oysters, dried fungi, coriander, spinach and spring onions and seasoned with cayenne pepper, mace and salt).

I like cooks who invent their own dishes. If this sort of thing floats your boat, have a look at Sybil Kapoor's Taste, A New Way to Cook; and Niki Segnit's The Flavour Thesaurus. Experimentation and Creativity are the way forward!

 

 

Pork Scratchings Come Out of The Cold

 

 

 

I've got a guilty secret. I like pork scratchings. Until recently, every day on my way home from the Blacking Factory (a quasi-heated, cavernous warehouse found in the scrappy, semi-industrial inner suburbs of North London), I would pull over at a garage on the A40 and buy a packet of Mr Porky's Pork Scratchings. It was sort of addictive. I kept this one quiet from Mrs Aitch, carefully removing the greasy, empty packet from the floor of the car before bounding up the steps to our shiny, Grecian knockered front door.

You see, it's been a sort of secret love affair over the years- I mean with the Pork Scratchings. If you're not British, you probably don't know what I'm talking about. Pork Scratchings are off-cuts of pork rind or skin, deep fried in fat, and then sprinkled with salt, flavourings and undoubtably, our old friend monosodium glutamate. They have a dodgy reputation; they're about as classy as a Knees Up Mother Brown at the local dog track. Those on a diet can look away now.

But now and again, you would run into tantalising, if raffish, home-made versions. The Star Tavern in Belgravia (that excellent traditional London pub; the former haunt of the Clermont gambling set and the Great Train Robbers) sold fresh scratchings, cooked to their own recipe, salted and presented in large glass jars, into which you could plunge your grubby mitts. I liked this.

And now, at last, Pork Scratchings can truly come out of the cold. Tom Parker Bowles, Matthew Fort and pig-farmer, Rupert Ponsonby, are the brainchildren behind a new venture: Mr Trotter's Great British Pork Crackling ('Hand Cooked For a Crisper Crunch'). I'm munching on a packet as I write this, it's a sort of manly, substitute breakfast. According to the packet, "it's seasoned with a special blend of ingredients, without a trace of MSG. Unlike other pork scratchings, Mr Trotter's Great British Pork Crackling is made with 100% prime British pork skin from the finest British Pigs".

They are indeed divine, and far less salty than the more ersatz brands. It's also nice to know that British pigs are being turned into scratchings- sorry boys, crackling, rather than Danish beasts. My only sorrow is that currently, they only seem to be available at the usual up-market parade:  Harvey Nick's food hall, Fortnum's, the Chatsworth Farm Shop. But you can, at least, buy them online, and in bulk (£57 for 30 bags, if you're wondering). I quite like the idea of a pork scratchings hoard; in this case, there's going to be no need to keep it a secret.

 

 

Haddock Monte Carlo

 

 

 

I'm suddenly rather keen on this dish. Mrs Aitch made it for me last night, and it was truly delicous. Who makes Haddock Monte Carlo anymore?  I can't think of anyone I know off-hand. But it's one of those classic English dishes which relies on the quality of the ingredients (in this case non-dyed smoked haddock, with the bones removed) and simple flavour combinations. It is, of course, pretty easy to make as well, which helps.

Place two smoked haddock fillets in a pan of milk and water, with a peppercorn and a bayleaf. I think it's important to buy un-dyed haddock, which has a more sophisticated flavour than that bright radio-active yellow version. Poach gently for about fifteen minutes.

Remove the fish, and scrape off the skin.

Place the cooked fish in a buttered oven-proof oval dish and set aside. Pour off the hot milky fish water into a small pan and start reducing furiously, at a high heat. When it has reduced by about half, remove from the heat and stir in a generous helping of single cream.

Slice up some tomatoes and scatter them over the haddock, and check the seasoning, adding sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, if you think it needs it. Pour the creamy sauce all over the fish and tomatoes, and bake the dish in the oven for a further fifteen minutes or so.

Serve with a poached egg on top, and finely chopped flat-leaf parsley. That's it. I like my poached eggs to be runny (who doesn't?) and there's that delicious moment when the yellow egg yolk dribbles into the creamy, savoury, tomato-infused sauce. This really is English cooking at its very best.

 

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Stuffed Tomatoes in the Italian Style

 

 

 

Really easy, delightfully light, herbaceous and subtle- this is a brilliant recipe. Get hold of some medium size tomatoes and slice the tops off (about a quarter of the way down). Make a thin slice across the bottoms, so that you can stand the tomatoes up straight and they won't topple over.

With a teaspoon scoop out the insides: the flesh, pips and that white core bit in the middle. In a small saucepan, combine a decent slug of olive oil, two chopped up anchovy fillets, a tablespoon of finely chopped white onion, and a chopped garlic clove. Cook over a medium heat until the onion is soft. Make sure you don't burn the onion.

Remove the pan from the heat and stir in 250ml of fresh breadcrumbs, a generous helping of chopped flat leaf parsley, and a teaspoon or so of freshly chopped oregano (pull off the leaves, and try not to include the stalks), sea salt and fresh black pepper. It's fine if you use quite a bit of olive oil, and you'll find that the breadcrumbs soak it up.

Fill the tomatoes with the herby, breadcrumb mixture, place them into an oiled ovenproof dish and bake in the oven at 180°C. I filled my tomatoes up neatly so that the breadcrumbs were level with the top. Watch them like a hawk, and remove when the breadcrumbs are nicely golden. Make sure they don't burn. Surprisingly, the skin of the tomatoes sort of melts in your mouth- there's no unpleasant inedible, unncooked wrinkly tomato skin thing going on in this recipe.

La Trattoria Terrazza

 

 

        Mr Jagger samples the delights of the Positano Room, 1966

 

More about La Trattoria Terrazza, the most fashionable restaurant in Swinging Sixties London. Yesterday I spent a snowy afternoon re-reading The Spaghetti Tree- and what an entertaining story it is! Franco Lagattolla and Mario Cassandro opened La Trattoria Terrazza in 1959. It very quickly became the fashionable haunt of artists, writers, models, film directors, actors, photographers and society hangers-on. In 1962, the London Daily Sketch ran a feature which noted that on one certain night, between 6.30 and midnight, the following people ate at La Terrazza: Ingrid Bergman, Leslie Caron, Danny Kaye, David Niven, Gregory Peck, Laurence Harvey, Sammy Davis Jnr, Michael Caine, Julie Christie, Terence Stamp, David Bailey and Jean Shrimpton. They forgot to include Ari Onnassis. This is astonishing when you discover just how small La Terrazza actually was at that time. Len Deighton, immortalised the restaurant in his spy novel, The Ipcress File: 'In London with a beautiful girl,' Deighton wrote in 1961, 'you must show her to Mario at La Terrazza.'

 

I'm trying to work out exactly why La Terrazza was so successful, and I think, after much thought, there are at least two reasons. The innovative food, and Mario's considerable charm. The initial interior of La Terrazza, sounds, frankly, pretty naff: a kitsch mural of Vesuvius, framed by bunches of plastic grapes and hanging wicker work chianti bottles- nothing out of the ordinary there; but the food, obviously, by the standards of the day, was.

A quick glance at a 1967 menu shows that Franco and Mario were offering: fritto misto mare (fried octopus), rognoncini con funghi al barolo (sautéed calves kidneys/mushrooms/red wine sauce), salsiccie fresche con spinaci (Italian sausage on spinach, tossed in olive oil and garlic), and cervella di vitello alla monteverde (calves brain sautéed in special batter). Of course, nowadays, any decent Italian restaurant worth its salt might sell such dishes, but back then, after fourteen years of deprivation and rationing, this was exciting, new and different (rationing in Britain, unbelievably, only ended in 1954, a mere five years before La Terrazza opened).

And I forgot to mention that Franco and Mario introduced informality to the restaurant scene. Until then, fashionable restaurants, such as Le Caprice, were grand, carpeted institutions where a coat and tie were de rigeur, where waiters wore starched shirt fronts and funeral black tail-coats, where the dishes of Escoffier were served "silver service"- an elaborate ritual which involved waiters spooning out food from silver tureens at the table.

Instead, the charming waiters at Le Terrazza wore hooped Neapolitan fisherman's jerseys (I bet you anything they flirted away like crazy), the food was brought straight to the table, piping hot; staff and clientele were on first name terms, and any pretence at a dress code was abandoned- Tony Snowdon was admitted wearing his trademark polo-neck; from that day, they never looked back. In many ways this was the birth of the modern restaurant we have today.

And then in 1960, the cartoonist and designer, Enzo Apicella, re-designed the downstairs space to create the Positano Room: a cool, white, spare space; a modernist re-interpretation of the rustic. In came green-tiled floors, roughly plastered white walls, multi-coloured down-light spots over each table, arched ceilings, modernist rush-seated armchairs, and rustic lobster pots. Apicella went on to re-design many famous restaurants, including San Lorenzo and the Pizza Express chain. 

 

               Enzo Apicella in the Positano Room, 1960

Here's the recipe for La Terraza's most popular signature dish Petto di Pollo Sorpresa, taken from Franco Lagattolla's The Recipes That Made a Million. Based on Chicken Kiev, it has the addition of parmesan and parsley, giving it that certain Italian something:

"First, have your butcher cut and skin four tender breasts of young chicken,leaving the wing-tip bone. Carefully, without breaking the flesh, flatten them with a flat-sided mallet-cleaver, very, very thinly. 

Place a 50g conical-shaped piece of well-chilled butter, which has been mixed with finely chopped garlic and parsley, a teaspoon of grated parmesan cheese, salt and milled black pepper, in the centre of each piece of chicken.

Roll them up tightly leaving the bone exposed rather like a handle. Seal in the butter by pressing the edges very firmly. Roll the chicken breasts in flour, dip into seasoned beaten egg and then carefully cover with breadcrumbs.

Deep fry the chicken breasts in hot oil until they are cooked and golden outside with the now melted savoury butter bursting to be released."

 

The Recipes That Made A Million

 

 

 

Not mine, I'm afraid. Franco Lagattolla's. It's the title of a fun book that I bought the other day for the princely sum of £2.50. That's right, £2.50. One of the things I love about second-hand book hunting is the amount of pleasure old books can bring you for say, the price of some awful paper cup of cold take-away coffee, otherwise known as a "Mocha Light Frappucino Blended Beverage- To Go". The coffee's gone in an instant, but the book stays on your shelf, to be poured over again and again; the cover, typography and graphics to be re-admired, the contents to be savoured and used as a spark for new ideas, or more simply, to dispel the gloom of a boring Sunday afternoon. Oh yes, I love old books. They're like trusty friends. And I like, especially, forgotten books from around forty years ago.

I've written about Franco before. As the blurb on the dust jacket of The Recipes That Made A Million says: "What did Michael Caine, Gregory Peck and Frank Sinatra all have in common? Answer: they all dined at Mario & Franco's superb Italian restaurants in London- the eating success story with the 'beautiful' people in the swinging sixties". 

 

Franco Lagattolla and Mario Cassandro; former waiters at The Mirabelle, first opened the starry La Trattoria Terrazza in Romilly Street, Soho, in 1959. It's hard to believe now, but La Terrazza was the first restaurant in Britain to serve genuine regional dishes from all over Italy. Their story is covered admirably by Alasdair Scott Sutherland in The Spaghetti Tree, Mario and Franco and the Trattoria Revolution, which I would recommend without hesitation.

 

 

Here's a recipe I liked the look of from "The Recipes That Made a Million". It's for Pȇches Flambées, otherwise known as Peaches flamed in kirsch. Those of you with pyromaniacal tendencies will appreciate it:

"Peel four firm but ripe peaches. Poach them in plain water and sugar syrup until barely tender. Do not over-cook. Keep them warm.

In a copper pan melt 25g (1oz) of castor sugar and allow it to take on the slightest colour over a low flame. Add the juice of one orange, four tablespoons of the poaching liquor and a string of lemon peel. Dissolve the caramelising sugar, moving it around with the back of a spoon. Now stir in two tablespoons of Melba sauce and add the poached peaches. 

Bring up the heat a little and, turing the peaches gently, glaze them in the syrupy sauce. Pour in a large wine glass of kirsch. Prick the peaches so that they absorb some of the flavours. Pull the pan sharply across the fire, and stand well back while the whole lot bursts into beautiful flames".

Melba Sauce, by the way, is just a pureé of rasberry jam, diluted with a little water and simmered for a few minutes, then strained.

 

 

Spiced Apple Chutney

 

 

A Happy New Year. As a self-confessed contrarian, I've suddenly decided that I rather like January. As much as I adore Christmas, it does go on a bit, doesn't it? An old friend of mine used to display a banner in his drawing room with "Christmas Must Go!" emblazoned across it. I'm beginning to understand what he felt like. Over the years I've also slowly come to the conclusion that what I really enjoy at Christmas is not the ubiquitous Turkey (dry this year, one of those things), but, instead, a succulent self-cooked, honey and mustard glazed ham (recipe from Sarah Raven), served up with home-made potted mushrooms, and chutney.

This year my mother gave me a pot of her very own "Spiced Apple Chutney", and I have to say, hand on heart, this is probably the best chutney I have tasted in a very long while. Perhaps ever. She discovered the recipe in a book on Indian food, but was a bit vague about what exactly the title was- so my apologies to the author for not being able to tell you the exact source. The chutney's almost a vegetarian curry in its own right; I think that might be part of its very considerable appeal. It's also fairly easy on the vinegar, which helps.

Peel, core and slice up 900kg of cooking apples. Put them into a bowl and sprinkle them with sea salt flakes. Set aside. Grate half a head of garlic and half a knob of fresh ginger. Slice up the remaining halves thinly.

Heat up a large pan and add a dash of oil. Fry the ginger and the garlic until slightly golden. Add 2 tablespoons of mustard seed, one teaspoon of fenugreek seed, 15 peppercorns, two teaspoons of powdered cumin, one teaspoon of chilli powder, one teaspoon of tumeric, and 3-4 chopped green chillis (removing the seeds with your knife. Fry gently for a few minutes.

Add the sliced apples, 150ml of cider vinegar, and 110g granulated sugar. Stir and cook slowly for about thirty minutes or so. Cool and decant into sterlised screw-top jars. The chutney needs to mature for a few months before eating.

I really do hope you are tempted to make this. It's a classic chutney and utterly delicious.

 

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Happy Christmas

 

Robert Braithwaite Martineau (1826-1869) The Christmas Hamper

 

To all readers of The Greasy Spoon, wishing you a very Happy Christmas and with every best wish for the New Year!

 

And to you your wassail too...

 

Here we come a-wassailing
Among the leaves so green;
Here we come a-wand'ring
So fair to be seen.

REFRAIN:
Love and joy come to you,
And to you your wassail too;
And God bless you and send you a Happy New Year
And God send you a Happy New Year.

English Traditional Carol, circa 1850 

 

A few years ago I became fascinated by Wassail. It's a word that gets bandied about at Christmas, but I bet you anything that most people haven't a clue as to what exactly it is or means. And neither did I until I did a bit of good old internet research. Wassail is a traditional mulled punch, drunk at Christmas-time in the Northern and Germanic countries. Wassailing can either mean the singing of carols (at Christmas, the serfs would wassail the Lord and Lady of the Manor), or, as in Gloucestershire, and the other western counties, the wassailing of an apple tree: to ensure a good harvest and drive away the evil spirits. This happens on Twelfth Night. The wassail is served in a wassail cup or bowl.

Every year, I make my own recipe for Mulled Cider, and it's exceedingly good, I tell you. I'm not really a fan of Mulled Wine: it's too heavy, there's too much tannin, it gives you a headache. And then many people get it wrong. Very wrong. They chuck in a bottle of plonk, boil it up, and then add all sorts of other dodgy ingredients, including vodka; and the result is an over-acidic, pungent brew which can leave you with a god-awful hangover. 

Mulled Cider is "different", smoother- and in my opinion delicious. There are no rules; but to get the best results, I suggest that you keep it simple. In a large pan, I pour in a decent dryish West Country of Norman organic cider. The stuff that looks like still, dark, pond water. Try and avoid the cheaper, sweeter, fizzy stuff.

Next, I cut an orange in half, and add that. I do the same with a lemon. I add a few spices: a cinnamon stick, a few cloves, ground nutmeg, and a kernel of ginger. All of these would work well. I taste it.

If it's too dry, add a bit of brown sugar. Start warming it up. You do not want to boil it. Keep it simmering at just below boiling point. If you boil it, all the alcohol will vapourise away, defeating the whole point of the thing in the first place. If you're going to serve it in glass mugs, make sure that you put a silver spoon in the mug first. This will prevent the glass from shattering. 

If you've got time, decorate the wassail with "Lamb's Wool". This is just bits of peeled apple, simmered in cider until woolly (it "explodes"). The pulp is floated on top of the mulled cider. 

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A Medieval Recipe for Christmas

A Medieval Recipe for Christmas

 

 

 

I'm quite curious about the food people ate in the Middle Ages. In The Big Fat Duck Cookbook, Heston Blumenthal mentions his fascination with a bizarre 14th century French cookery book, Le Viander de Taillevent, in which a chicken is plucked alive, basted with soya, wheat-germ and dripping- to simulate roasting, coaxed asleep, and then 'brought back to life' at the table.

In case you're wondering, the rather beautiful illustration is from the Duc de Berry's Book of Hours and depicts the month of January. It probably shows the Twelfth Night banquet, as during the Middle Ages the focus of the Christmas festivities tended to be during the Twelve Days of Christmas, and after the Advent Fast.

I've adapted a 15th century English recipe for "Goose in a Garlic and Grape Sauce" which you could easily make at home. I haven't tried it yet, so I've no idea what it tastes like- it could be foul:

You make a stuffing out of garlic cloves, seedless grapes, chopped parsley and salt, and then stick it up a goose. Roast the bird in an oven set at 350༠C (twenty minutes per pound). When you're happy that the goose is cooked, take it out of the oven, and set aside to cool.

Spoon out the cooked stuffing and blend it in a food processor, adding three hard-boiled egg yolks, and half a cup of cider vinegar. Spoon the finished sauce over the goose.

 

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Devil Sauce

 

 

 

Devil- a culinary term which... first appeared as a noun in the 18th century, and then in the early 19th century as a verb meaning to cook something with fiery hot spices or condiments...The term was presumably adopted because of the connection between the devil and the excessive heat in Hell...Boswell, Dr Johnson's biographer, frequently refers to partaking of a dish of "devilled bones" for supper, which suggests an earlier use...

 Oxford Companion to Food

 

There's something extremely satisfying about "devilled" food. As you know, "to devil" a dish means to add some form of spice, often something like Worcester Sauce or a hot mustard. These days "devilling' is slightly old-fashioned; it has a hint of the 19th century about it, a whiff of a St James's Street club. I happen to love the tangy, slightly sweet, piquant taste of Lea & Perrins (first produced in the English town of Worcester in 1837), and, like the Victorians, will quite happily devil just about anything, including ham, eggs, kidneys and mutton chops.

Here's a recipe for "Gravy à la Diable" from Cassell's New Universal Cookery Book, Lizzie Heritage [Cassell and Company:London] 1894: 

Required: half a pint of clear brown stock...half an ounce of arrowroot, a tablespoonful of claret, a teaspoonful of French mustard, a dessertspoonful of Worcester sauce, and a little soluble cayenne, with salt to taste, and a few drops of soy. Mix the thickening with the claret, and the rest of the ingredients, and boil for a few minutes. Serve with kidneys, steaks, & etc., or with grilled fish. For a hotter sauce, increase the Worcester sauce, or boil a few capsicum seeds in the gravy."

Arabella Boxer also has a recipe for Devil Sauce from her book of English Food (recently re-published by Penguin in a sumptious new edition), which I've adapted for The Greasy Spoon: 

You melt 30g butter, and stir in 1½ tablespoons of flour, ½ teaspoon of English Mustard, and ½ teaspoon of Curry Powder. Cook this, stirring, for one minute. 275ml of milk is added, and 150 ml of double cream (both of which you've previously heated up together), and the sauce is stirred constantly on the heat until it starts to bubble. The sauce is then simmered gently for about eight minutes, until slightly reduced- and the remaining flavourings stirred in: ½ teaspoon of salt, a pinch of cayenne, ½ tablespoons of Worcestershire Sauce, ½ tablespoon of Mushroom Ketchup and, last but not least, a dash of our old friend, Tabasco.

This will make a basic sauce, which can then be poured over an ingredient of your choice: grilled or fried chicken, boiled eggs, and game. I think it would also work well with slices of fresh, juicy ham.

 

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Saturday Lunch Toad in the Hole (with Onion Gravy)

 

 

 

For some weird reason, I always think that the British classic, Toad in the Hole, is perfect for a Saturday Lunch. Not Sunday or Monday, or even Thursday for that matter. Saturday. I can't exactly explain why, there's probably a regressive, childhood thing going on there. Toad in the Hole is easy to make. It's filling. It's cheap. It's also delicious. This is Comfort Food at its best.

If you happen to be American, you are probably now wondering how on earth us Brits can eat one of those slimey, knobbly creatures? Sort of less appealing then a French grenouille, I hear you cry. But as much as I am curious to sample one of those tantalising little critters, the 'toad' is, in all probability, English slang for sausage. It's a bit like Welsh Rabbit (which ain't a rabbit), or Scotch Woodcock (which ain't a woodcock, either).

Back to the Toad: Heat your oven to 220C (425F). Get hold of some decent, fat, organic sausages and chuck them into a roasting tin with a few knobs of lard. You could have fun experimenting with different types of sausage. The better your sausage, the better your Toad in the Hole will taste. Cook the sausages in the oven for about ten minutes. My latest sausage discovery has been Sainsbury's Taste the Difference British Pork & Caramelised Red Onion Sausages. These are utterly delicious! Sweet, juicy, slightly spicy, lots of lovely caramelised flavours going on in there.

Meanwhile, mix up the batter. Sieve 4oz (110g) of self raising flour into a bowl, and add a pinch of salt and some pepper. Make a hole or a "well" in the centre of the flour, and pour in 5 fluid oz (150ml) of semi-skimmed milk into the hole. Crack in an egg, too. Mix the flour, milk, and egg up very gradually with a wooden spoon.  Beat well, and then add the same amount of milk, again. Pour the finished batter over the sausages, and cook them in the oven for a further 45 minutes or so, until the Toad is risen and browned.

The Onion Gravy is a cinch. You slice up some onions, and brown them in a frying pan. If you add a few pinches of sugar and salt, this will help them to caramelise. You want them to get brown and a bit burnt. This is a good thing. Add a tablespoon of flour, and let it cook in the oniony fat. Once the onions and flour are brown enough, you can deglaze the pan with some stock, water, and perhaps, a slug or two of white wine. Instead of gravy browning (what's that?), I use a few drops of Soy Sauce, which will give the gravy an even richer colour and taste. A teaspoon of redcurrent jelly is not a bad plan, either. Onion Gravy should be thin.

 

 

 

 

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