Читать книгу The Kitchen Diaries II - Nigel Slater - Страница 82

March

MARCH 2

The cast-iron casserole

A casserole is a cooking vessel rather than the food cooked in it. Nevertheless, the word has come to mean a thick, sloppy stew cooked in a covered pot. I’m no pedant and that is fine by me. Once under the ownership of the frugal home cook, such recipes are now standard gastropub fare, and in particular those involving lamb shanks.

The shank, no longer the cheapest of meats, is the hard-working cut from the top of the front leg. The muscles and sinews of the shank can soften or tighten as the mood takes them, so it is best cooked slowly, in liquid, and in a low oven. Frustratingly, the flesh can fall easily from the bone or not, so exact timing in a recipe is almost impossible. They may need an hour or three. Of course, modern cooks demand a recipe that is done in the time it states, but with the lamb shank we must enter a different mindset, one where something is done when it feels like it, not when a recipe says it should be.

Size isn’t necessarily an issue, but the smaller the shank, the quicker it may come to tenderness. No guarantees though; I have met the odd tough little bugger before now. Covering with a lid or foil will help the meat to steam as well as bake, which should encourage it down the path towards tenderness. But the most likely way to guarantee your meat falling from the bone in a sinewy, velvety mound is to sink it in plenty of liquid – stock, wine, cider, whatever. Just keep the meat covered. This is no mean feat with a large shank, so regular turning during cooking is essential to keep as much of the flesh covered for as long as possible.

I have several casseroles – by which I mean the pots, not their edible contents. A couple are scarred from bean-based recipes forgotten in the oven (chickpeas leave bubblewrap-type rings on the base; cannellini the sort of snow you get on an untuned television screen), whilst many have cream or grey linings that have taken on the hue of red wine sauce. That’ll be boeuf bourguignon, or perhaps oxtail. There is a beautifully understated matt-black one, solid cast iron, which I use for stock and occasionally for a breadcrumb-topped stew. If I were a different sort of cook, it would have been used like those in Castelnaudary, the French home of cassoulet, with its bits of pork, goose and beans. But mine gets used for macaroni cheese, chicken casserole with tarragon and potatoes and, today, a heart-warming dish of lamb shanks cooked with thyme, garlic, onions and black-eyed beans, or other beans if you wish. The sort of recipe that looks as if it took days to make, that warms like no other and makes you feel like a real cook. Whatever one of those may be.

Lamb shanks with black-eyed beans

I say black-eyed beans, but you could use haricot beans or chickpeas if that is what you have to hand.

dried black-eyed beans: 500g

bay leaves: 2

olive oil

lamb shanks: 4

onions: 3

thyme: 4 small sprigs

garlic: 4 plump cloves, finely sliced

plain flour: 4 lightly heaped tablespoons

stock or, at a push, water: 750ml

For the crust:

fresh white breadcrumbs: 150g

a handful of chopped parsley

olive oil

Soak the beans in cold water overnight to plump them up. The next day, drain and rinse them, then bring to the boil in deep water, together with the bay leaves and a good glug of olive oil. Boil hard for ten minutes, then reduce the heat so they simmer merrily till they are just tender yet retain their shape and some bite – a matter of thirty to thirty-five minutes or so. Drain the beans in a colander and set aside.

Season the lamb shanks and lightly colour them in a little oil – 2 tablespoons should do – in a heavy-based casserole. Once they are pale gold, remove them, but leave their cooking fat behind. Peel the onions, cut them in half and then cut each half into thick segments. Let these soften in the pan over a medium heat, adding a little more oil if there is less than a couple of spoonfuls of fat left. As the onions soften, add the thyme sprigs and the garlic. When all is soft and translucent, stir in the flour and leave to colour lightly for two or three minutes. Gradually stir in the stock to make a thick, oniony sauce. Set the oven at 180°C/Gas 4.

Tip the drained cooked beans in with the onions, then tuck in the lamb and any juices from the plate and season with salt and black pepper. Simmer for thirty minutes, partially covered with a lid, stirring from time to time to check the beans are not sticking. Add more stock if you feel it needs it, then remove from the heat.

Mix the breadcrumbs and parsley with 3 or 4 tablespoons of olive oil, then scatter them over the top of the casserole. Cover loosely with foil, transfer to the oven and cook for an hour and a half or until the meat can be persuaded to part company from its bones. Remove the foil and cook for a further ten to fifteen minutes to let the crust crisp up.

Enough for 4

Getting passion fruit right

The passion fruit offers us the crunch of a hundred seeds, a dab of golden jelly surrounding each one and a little (very little) piercing saffron juice. Sour, sweet, soft, crisp, the passion fruit gives us a hit of bracing freshness to brighten a grey day.

The dark, spherical fruit is most usually sold unripe – that is, completely smooth, a dull purple mauve, either in packs of four from the supermarket or loose in a cardboard box from the greengrocer’s. Keep them till the skin has thinned and its surface is covered with dimples, like a golf ball. Like us, the passion fruit is better for a few wrinkles.

As your fruits progress towards ripeness, their skin will shrivel and become a little brittle. Though small, they should feel heavy for their size. Lightness is generally an indication of dryness within. Catch it before the casing collapses on one side, which is the fruit’s last gasp.

Eaten too early, the passion fruit has an astringency that will remind you of the pomegranate, and the juice will be watery and pale. Kept till ripe, it will give you intense fruit flavours and bright, clean, fresh-tasting juice and seeds, to be eaten first thing on a cold morning, with a teaspoon, like a boiled egg. A little cup of sunshine.

This morning the greengrocer has a box of them that are spot on (I have a feeling they were about to be thrown out). I get them cheap and use their knife-sharp juice to make tiny pots of golden cream no bigger than espresso cups. Just four or five teaspoons per person with which to end tonight’s dinner.

Passion fruit creams

passion fruit: 16

double cream: 500ml

caster sugar: 150g

lemon juice: 35ml

Cut the passion fruit in half and scrape out the seeds and juice into a small sieve balanced over a measuring jug or bowl. Let the juice from the fruit drip through, then rub the seeds against the sieve with a teaspoon to get as much of the pulp through as you can. Set the juice aside in a cool place and reserve the seeds for later.

Put the cream and caster sugar in a saucepan and bring to the boil, stirring occasionally to dissolve the sugar. Lower the heat and leave to bubble for three minutes, stirring from time to time. Put the lemon juice in a measuring jug and make the quantity up to 75ml with the reserved passion fruit juice. Keep the remaining juice cold.

Remove the cream mixture from the heat, stir in the lemon and passion fruit juice and leave to settle for a few minutes. Pour into 6 or 8 espresso cups or very small glasses. I like to stir a few of the reserved passion fruit seeds into the mixture for a contrast in texture (say, half a dozen per cup) but that is up to you. Cool, then refrigerate for at least a couple of hours.

Just before you serve the creams, spoon a little puddle of the passion fruit juice over the top. As each diner digs in with their teaspoon, the juice will trickle down into the depths of the cream.

Makes 6–8 espresso cups

MARCH 6

Beans on toast again

Being compiled from my dog-eared, chaotic notebooks rather than a meticulously kept and chronologically perfect diary means that many of my everyday meals, those I tend to do almost on autopilot, rarely get their fifteen minutes in the limelight. This is a shame because they are often jolly good eating.

Such meals tend to get taken for granted, like very close friends. One of my favourite quick fixes has always been beans on toast. I like the sweet commercial sauce and the thick toast, which, just for the record, I always butter. The joy of richly sauced beans and hot toast is not confined to the turquoise tin though, and I often make a home-made version, with cans of beans that I put in my own sauce, stirring in bacon, mushrooms or whatever is to hand (chorizo and black pudding are favourite additions).

Today, even with my woolly hat on (I now have three, and every one of them makes me look as stupid as the other), the biting-cold wind is making my ears numb. The idea of going home to sweet, sticky beans with a wodge of warm sourdough bread appeals more than almost anything I can think of. I could cop out with my mate Heinz, embellishing them with chilli or Marmite, or even a bit of bacon, but instead decide to take an extra thirty minutes to make a down-home version. It does the trick.

Beans on toast

A little more trouble than opening a can, but much more satisfying when you have the time.

lardons or cubed bacon or pancetta: 200g

an onion

a little rapeseed or olive oil

a rib of celery

carrots: 2 small to medium

chopped tomatoes: two 400g cans

canned beans (pinto, haricot, butter beans etc): two 400g cans

black treacle: 1 teaspoon

a lump of sourdough loaf

Fry the lardons in a deep pan over a moderate heat. Peel and roughly chop the onion. When the lardons and their fat are golden, add the onion, together with a little rapeseed or olive oil if there seems too little fat in the pan. Chop the celery and carrots, add to the pan and leave to cook for a full five minutes, till fragrant and starting to soften. Add the tomatoes, simmer for ten minutes, then stir in the drained beans and simmer for another ten minutes. Season with the treacle, a little black pepper and some salt.

Warm the bread in the oven, tear into chunks and serve with the beans.

Enough for 2