Is that the time? Time to cook – again? Keeping up a supply of food, among everything that needs doing every day, is a lot to ask anyone new to cooking. When you decide that good food matters, you enter a conflicting world. Loving food is bittersweet. A passion that is painful without guidance from someone who really knows how hard it can be. You need someone to say, ‘I know. I know what to do – it won’t be showy or hard to make. It is not the kind of supper that costs a lot or needs a trip to a special shop. It will not mean you have to grow your own, rear pigs or catch a mackerel on a line. But everyone will be full, and remember how good it was.’

These are the secrets of women for you to use every day when it is time to cook. Big, good dishes in one pot to get ready quickly: modest, nurturing, heroic food that solves a daily dilemma.

Reality, pitched against aspiration. That is the sum of my daily life. Of course I would like to bake cupcakes or cure hams all day, but the truth is that under the roof of my home, the daily summit of my cooking ambition is simply to provide enough good food for us to continue to exist. It is not that I do not make forays into more extreme areas of cookery – it is my job to do that – but the recipes I want are very different from those I need. My dilemma, shared by millions, is that I am short of time, I do not have unlimited funds to spend on food yet I – and everyone in my home – need real nourishment.

What can I make that is fast, economical and filling? This is the trinity of subsistence for most people in full-time employment, those who turn the key in the front door in the early evening aware that their day’s work is a long way from done. Not everyone feels this way. That is why ready meals were invented. Yes! Those things that taste good while watching a cookery show on telly!

Knowing how to make soups with delicate white beans, an ingredient that is rather wholesome yet seems so glamorous, so well dressed, when eaten with transparent splinters of crisp smoked bacon. Understanding how to cook a pan of faultless, smooth mashed potato, or make a dish of spiced pulses that tickles with interest. A lot of us want to do the right thing but not all of us have the tools to do it. There are many lost domestic skills, but while life will go on without darning the children’s socks every night, it is threatened by the loss of home cooking that uses fresh ingredients.

More bizarrely, this is not the result of there not being enough to eat. In the West, the loss of cooking skills does not cause starvation – but it is the root of serious ill-health epidemics. A few clever ways to feed ourselves, our families and friends with food that is cheap to buy, quick to make and fills the tummy with goodness would do much to change lives – and that is what this chapter is about.

The verbal tradition

I am a self-taught cook and I, too, have my disasters, some of them highly embarrassing. But I love to pick up secrets from others. There are people to meet in every part of this book whose knowledge I want to pass on to you. Some were women who have been very much part of my life, like my mother, a perfectionist with a great creative mind. Others are people I know, some well, some not, or those whose lives I have studied, like les mères, the working mother cooks of France who understood completely how to fit good food into a busy day.

Never be afraid, when someone serves you something good, to ask them how they did it. This is the verbal tradition: the passing on of information and secrets, so easily lost when the talking stops. It is the single most vital tool in retaining traditions of cookery and needs to be there with each jotted recipe, every cookery book, any time there is a pan on the cooker.

My mother

Being full is something I knew before anything else. As a small child, I remember our round tea table and its wicker chairs, the piles of sandwiches and toasted, buttered currant buns. I was my mother’s fourth child – she would eventually have six. Tall and blonde, my mother had her hair done weekly in the hairdressers at the end of the street: backcombed on top and curling down to her shoulders. I noticed her long nails were pale pink as she made our supper after school. She claimed not to have been able to cook a thing when she married, aged only 18, but she became a very good cook.

Her mother had lived in France since 1950, and with every visit the French commonsense way of eating must have bled into my mother’s attitude. She made creamy soups, melting gratins and beat her mustard-yellow mayonnaise by hand. She always peeled tomatoes by plunging them in hot water, then dressed them in real vinaigrette made with genuine Dijon mustard which sank deep into their flesh – and she made heavenly dauphinoise potatoes. She never cheated, but like a French housewife she saw nothing wrong in buying in a terrine or a tart when she did not want to cook. As children we probably smelled more garlicky than our school mates.

My mother was not one of those to make fairy cakes with. We never had hilarious squirting sessions with piping bags and hundreds-and-thousands. She did not ‘play at cooking’, but taught us to cook – and she could be a terrifying perfectionist. It was she who drove me to make sweet pastry so thin it was possible to shine a light through it. She was the person who came up behind me when I was peeling potatoes at the sink for the roast, and said, ‘I never cut them up that way, myself,’ with chilling authority. When we were teenagers, visiting friends would gasp at the achievements of my mother and her brigade of cooking daughters. I loved to cook but already, before I was grown up, I knew it was hard work. I think my home tuition went a little far and was overly obsessive – though useful for my career. For me, cooking has always been an exhausting passion, though I have now learned how to enjoy it and not be worn down by it.

At primary school age we had our fair share of fish fingers, baked beans and Heinz tomato soup, but more and more, as we got older, we ate ‘grown-up’ food at weekends. On one occasion my mother came back from shopping carrying a tray of soft raw bread dough, covered lightly with greaseproof paper. ‘What is that?’ I asked. ‘I am going to make a pizza,’ she answered, unwrapping a pack of Danish ‘mozzarella’. It was the early 1970s. She was a long way ahead of her time.

Running out

As a family we were unusually preoccupied with food and there was at one point a definite fear of ‘running out’. Not due to poverty; financially we were privileged, though my mother knew how to be frugal, often cooking oxtail and tongue, and giving us an early introduction to dumplings, lentils and beans. At the time I hated the meals with pulses. Lentils especially, which tasted floury – I longed for potatoes. I adore lentils now.

My parents had divorced when I was three. We lived with my mother but spent half of our school holidays with my father. My mother remarried when I was six and we moved from London to north Buckinghamshire, about two hours’ drive from my father’s house.

My stepfather, Teddy, was a commodity broker who commuted daily to London by train, flamboyant ‘kipper’ tie around his neck. In the mid-1970s, just prior to the power cuts and three-day week, he predicted a food shortage. For several weeks we spent each Saturday at the cash and carry, picking up dry food supplies that would be taken down to the cellar of our house for storage. He bought whole butchered lambs from Wales and filled a chest freezer with them. I remember my mother making meat pies and stewing apple for crumbles and filling a second freezer. We installed a generator and bought a lot of candles, sacks of sugar and flour, Marmite, ketchup, even jars of sweets.

There was no food emergency after all. We ate from that cellar for years, even moving house later on with some of the ketchup and Marmite. But we had experienced something unusual and it has stayed with me. Witnessing my mother caught up in survival mode for those few months, however ultimately unnecessary, left its mark. What I saw (and my siblings are bound to accuse me of melodrama) would for a short period have been similar to that of a child observing their mother during food rationing in World War II, or even a degree of the desperation felt by the women just ahead of the French Revolution who could not feed their children. My stepfather had provided the means for obtaining food; my mother had set about cooking her way out of trouble.

Stuffed

After that we were always full – if anything, I was rather overfed. ‘Being stuffed,’ answered one of my sisters when I asked her for her earliest memory. And I became interested in cooking, imitating my mother, learning from her, helping her and eventually leaving home a reasonably competent cook. Being in a large family meant I learned to make heaps of food from very little. Filling food on a budget – and always, as my husband remarked with horror when we met – far, far too much of it.

None of this mattered for years. I did eventually learn to temper the size of my helpings and to waste less, though I admit to a deep-seated fear of an empty fridge or store cupboard. I hate the idea of running out. It seems vaguely paranoid, but now I am in a new phase of this. Here it is again: the sense that the food supply is once again threatened, this time not only because of politics but also global warming. The added dissatisfaction with the food industry has narrowed my choices with food and as a consequence our food bills are rising. Once again there is the need to use cooking, combined with good economics, to deal with a crisis. The battle has begun.

Money

Two strong arguments are always put forward by women who do not cook: time poverty and money – poverty itself, in fact. They feel these are powerful reasons why cooking has more or less stopped in their home and every meal is eaten out or is bought ready made. But time is a commodity that cooking does not eat up unless you want it to.

Most of the recipes in this chapter take between 20 and 40 minutes to prepare, an acceptable period of time for a hungry person to wait and not much longer than reheating a ready meal. It is true that skill helps save time – obviously the quicker you can crush and peel a garlic clove or chop an onion, the sooner the food will be on plates. Cooking regularly hones those skills – and the process becomes faster all round.

The actual will to cook is quite another thing, but that is a slow process of persuasion that has much to do with building a series of good memories: experiences where things have gone well and left nice thoughts in the part of the brain that keeps a record of smell and flavour.

But money. That’s a good one. Discussing the cost of food is like talking about religion. Someone is going to become upset. People who have money are traditionally not permitted to tell people who have little how to spend it. So that rules out most of our TV chefs – both they and the broadcasters become rather indecisive. They either broach the subject with supreme clumsiness and drive the bad eaters underground, or they are just plain unconvincing. It is hard to get inside the skin of those for whom budgeting is a daily concern, unless it is an experience you genuinely face. Anxiety about money also overwhelms creativity, experiment and adventure. This is the reason why so many on low incomes rely on trusted, branded ready-made foods that may not be as nourishing as other low-cost meals but which every mum knows she can serve and every plate will be emptied. The thought that anything bought on limited means will be rejected is nothing short of disastrous. This is why it is so necessary, when giving up convenience food and embarking on becoming a home cook, to know the secret of how to do it well each time.

SOUPS

Knowing how to make just a few soups is the secret of survival. Most take only 20 minutes to make, the ingredients are cheap and, after a bowl of soup, you feel full to the ears. We don’t want much more than that, do we? The food industry has a long tradition of making our soup for us, and selling it in cans, packets or ‘fresh’ in cartons. But in terms of goodness, it always falls short of the real thing.

Soups are to most Europeans what dal is to India and Pakistan – a vital, nourishing food that is affordable. But the British and Americans are a little soup-shy. The wealthy traditionally view soups as a starter, or diet food, and there is an educated margin of bowl-food enthusiasts – but on the whole we typically avoid all but the best-known canned varieties. A pity all round, not least because a bigger love for soup would instantly solve the catering problems of schools and hospitals.

Italian mothers rear their children on minestrone and pasta e fagioli, the delicious garlic-scented white bean and pasta soup capable of supplying a slow stream of energy for the rest of the day. The soup-devoted French have their Niçoise pistou, similar to minestrone yet greener and with more garlic; they also have their famous fish stew-soups and a delicious heartening cabbage and pork broth from the hilly Auvergne. In central Europe buttery dumplings float in rich and gamey meaty soups, while potatoes dominate the soups of colder Nordic countries. That is not to say we do not have some great broths in Britain, such as mutton and pearl barley, likely based on the lost medieval pottages, soups made with peas, grains and herbs.

Velvet soups

These are the smooth, creamy-textured soups that are sometimes just the essence of one vegetable, sometimes two, but never too many. The good news, for those still not persuaded to make meat or vegetable stock, is that you do not need to use it in these soups. There is another, time-saving and effective way, using additional butter, which is typically found in French home cooking but less in chefs’ books (chefs tend to be slavish to bouillon). When making a soup in which one ingredient stars, like lettuce or watercress, the butter method is especially successful. In the meantime, soups should begin in their humblest form.

White bean well-dressed soup

see PLATE 1

A big energising soup, its creaminess comes from the beans and adding wholemilk or Greek yoghurt at the end of cooking, which also gives the soup a refreshing, citrus taste. Onion, garlic and one of a number of green vegetables are added to lighten the floury texture of the beans. ‘Well dressed’ means it has a number of guises and can be many different soups, depending on what you add from the list of embellishments.

The secret value of beans

The trick of balancing the food budget yet feeling happy with what you eat lies in some of the humblest foods. Bean soups like the one below are something I turn to often – but with great enthusiasm. All types of bean are now fairly easy to find. Even the otherwise unimaginatively stocked late-night grocery across the road from where I live sells a range. I will sometimes buy dried beans, reconstitute and boil them, but it is a longer process (see page 230) and this section is about time poverty. Beans, like all pulses (lentils, chickpeas, peas), are in many ways the perfect food. They contain a vast range of nutrients and are high in fibre, growing them is great for the environment and though they are not grown in the UK (some ought to be) they are never air-freighted. Canned beans and pulses, incidentally, are not an inferior food to dried. With one can costing under £1 yet containing enough to serve 2–3 people, learning to use them in soups should be an essential part of every home cook’s abilities.

SERVES 4

4 tablespoons olive oil

2 medium white-fleshed onions, roughly chopped

4 garlic cloves, crushed with the back of a knife and peeled

1 fennel bulb, roughly chopped, or choose from: 2 celery sticks, sliced; 2 leeks, sliced; half a cucumber, seeds removed and thickly sliced; 3–4 medium-sized turnips, including green tops, sliced

2 x 400g/14oz can white haricot beans or cannellini beans

900ml/1½ pints water or stock

salt and white pepper

400ml/14fl oz Greek-style, wholemilk strained yoghurt

EMBELLISHMENTS

Add one or more of the following (you can also eat this soup plain):

• Slices of ciabatta, baguette or other open-textured bread, fried until golden in olive oil

• Melted butter, with chopped garlic

• Red chilli, the seeds removed, then sliced

• Crisp sautéed bacon or pancetta, chopped

• Basil pesto sauce

• Black olive tapenade sauce

• Roasted red peppers

• Flakes of raw, undyed smoked haddock (they will cook in the hot soup)

Put the oil in a large pan and heat over a medium flame. Add the onions, garlic and fennel or other green vegetable and cook until transparent and fragrant, but not coloured. Add the beans with their liquid, then the water or stock. Bring to the boil and then cook for about 10 minutes until the beans and vegetables are soft. Transfer all to a food processor or liquidiser and blend until smooth. Taste and add salt if necessary. Add a good pinch of white pepper.

To serve, reheat until almost boiling. Add the yoghurt and heat until nearly boiling, then remove from the heat. Ladle into bowls and add one or two of the extra ‘outfits’ from the list.

Tomato and mascarpone cream

My father also remarried, when I was five. My stepmother Annie Lou, who at the time had no children, was suddenly faced with four children to feed for half of every holidays and little sympathy from her instant family. There was a kind of competence and reliability about her cooking, learned from Cordon Bleu recipe cards, Arabella Boxer’s First Slice Your Cookbook, and The Joy of Cooking, which we displaced children found reassuring. I am not sure how much joy Annie Lou found in cooking itself, but she saw it as a duty and shopped enthusiastically with the village butcher, and even grew vegetables. She did not make all the many different dishes my mother made, nor share my mother’s love of southern European food, but she had a few great staples that became ‘old friends’. You knew where you were in the week by what was on the table. If it was fish pie, it was Friday; cottage or shepherd’s pie was usually there on a Monday, the day after a magnificent roast, the joint bought from Mr Vigor in Woodborough. I have no complaints. On winter picnics at horsy events (not my favourite days as I did not share the family’s devotion to all things equine) she always filled flasks with very hot, Heinz tomato soup ‘let down’ with milk. I loved that stuff. Later, when making my own tomato soup with milk, I laughed to find its eventual flavour not unlike the one from the can. Adding fresh mascarpone cheese, however, takes the flavour of tomato soup to a new, richer level.

SERVES 4

4 tablespoons olive oil

2 garlic cloves, crushed with the back of a knife and peeled

1 x 400g/14oz can plum tomatoes, chopped

225g/8oz fresh cherry or other ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped

2 sprigs basil

1 dessertspoon sugar

200ml/7fl oz water or stock

250g/9oz mascarpone cheese

salt and black pepper

To serve: extra olive oil, extra basil leaves, bread such as baguette or ciabatta

Put the oil, garlic, canned tomatoes, fresh tomatoes and basil into a large pan and heat. When the mixture boils, cook for 10 minutes, then add the sugar and water or stock. Simmer for 20–30 minutes until sweet. Cool for a few minutes, then transfer to a liquidiser or food processor. Process until smooth and return to the pan. Stir in the mascarpone thoroughly and reheat. Do not allow to boil. Taste and add salt if necessary, then add pepper. Ladle into bowls, pour over a little more olive oil in a thin stream, then scatter over some extra basil leaves. Eat with slices of baguette or ciabatta (or other open-textured bread) fried until golden in olive oil.

The soups of French mothers

The French mother cooks, les mères, understood better than anyone the beauty of seasonal soups. These nineteenth- and twentieth-century cooks, who cooked in their famous restaurants as they would in their homes, were both experimental with their ideas and yet always down to earth, understanding the limits of their small kitchens and low budget. They made soup every day, with whatever produce had come into its glut season and had lowered in price. Soups were made quickly, preserving the green freshness of the vegetables. No one was given only a bowl of soup, the whole tureen would be brought to the table and ladled into diners’ bowls, often over something to make the dish more substantial: a piece of toasted bread and cheese, a poached egg, some steamed shellfish or braised bone marrow. When the bowl was clean, more would be offered. Imagine that in a restaurant today.

Garden ‘essences’

These soups are made only with a single dominant vegetable, preferably without anything else other than water and butter, with maybe a few drops of cream at the end. They are very typical of the lunchtime soups offered by les mères in their restaurants. They have a light, quite thin texture, so put plenty of toast or fresh bread on the table. Or put another ingredient in the bowl, such as a poached egg, some grilled shards of bacon or some fresh goat’s cheese, spread on toasted bread. This method is ideal for the delicate sugary flavours of freshly picked seasonal vegetables. These soups must be eaten as soon as they have been liquidised, before they discolour or become starchy. The following soup is made with young broccoli, but there are various different vegetables this method is friendly to.

SERVES 4

6 walnut-sized lumps of butter

1 onion, chopped

450g/1lb fresh broccoli (in peak condition, no yellow flowers), chopped

1 litre/1¾ pints water, at boiling point

salt and white pepper

To serve: cream or crème fraiche (optional); a few cress leaves or ‘micro leaf’ herbs, pea shoots or even just tender parsley leaves; you can also serve over a poached egg or toast spread with fresh goat’s curd

Melt the butter and add the onion. Cook over a low heat for 2 minutes then add the water. Wait until you are on the point of sitting down to eat then add the broccoli. Cook for a further 4 minutes until the broccoli is just tender, then transfer to a food processor and liquidise until smooth. Taste and add salt if necessary, then add pepper.

Serve immediately, with a few blobs of crème fraiche, if you like, and some little leaves scattered over the top.

THE SAME ESSENCE SOUP – WITH ALTERNATIVE VEGETABLES

Replace the broccoli with:

• Watercress – use the upper leafy part of 3 bunches.

• Celery leaves – look for celery that has not been trimmed, and use about 4 handfuls of leaves, cooking them for about 5 minutes.

• Spinach – use 150ml/¼ pint less water with 450g/1lb spinach; if it is large-leaf spinach, this must be without the stalks.

• Fresh shelled peas, 450g/1lb. You can also make this with frozen petits pois but only simmer for 1 minute after adding the boiling water.

• Mange tout, 450g/1lb.

• Wild garlic, available in March/April – use 2 large handfuls, chopped, stringy stems removed.

• Sorrel – the lemon flavour of this leaf is beautiful, but be prepared for the leaves to quickly turn brown when cooked.

• Asparagus sprue or ‘kitchen asparagus’ – these are the thin stems; buy in mid-season when the glut brings prices down.

• Young nettles – available in March/April; you can pick them yourself using rubber gloves.

Lettuce and courgette ‘butter’ soup

The British-based French chef Raymond Blanc talks often about the influence of his mother. I have always liked his book Cooking for Friends, which I have owned for 18 years and which is filled with practical recipes. It exemplifies the well-organised cooking of France and reflects Blanc’s upbringing, including this classic recipe for a vegetable ‘crème’. ‘This simple soup,’ says Blanc, ‘reminds me of the plain wholesome cooking of my childhood.’ I love it not only for its lovely colour and delicate flavour – the lettuce adds a sharpness that sits beautifully with the soup’s buttery richness – but because I can buy the ingredients anywhere, at any time of year. Make this soup with water; the secret is in adding a larger amount of butter than usual.

SERVES 4

1 litre/1¾ pints water or stock

4 onions, roughly chopped

1 garlic clove, crushed with the back of a knife and peeled

1 floury potato, peeled and cut into dice, then rinsed under water

3 walnut-sized lumps of butter

3 courgettes, sliced

1 large green lettuce (romaine or cos is ideal) or two butterhead lettuce (the soft-leaved English type), roughly chopped

salt and white pepper

90ml/6 tablespoons whipping cream

Put the water or stock in a pan and heat to simmering point. Pour into a jug and put the onions, garlic, potato and butter into the same pan and cook over a medium heat for about 10 minutes. Stir from time to time, and, if the potato sticks to the bottom of the pan, add about half a mug of water.

Add the courgettes and lettuce leaves and cook for another 2 minutes, then add the hot water or stock. Cook for 5 minutes, transfer to a liquidiser or food processor and process until very smooth. A perfectionist French cook would sieve the soup to remove any leaf fibres, but this will not make any real difference to the enjoyment. If you want to do this – put the soup through a hand-operated food mill, or mouli legumes.

Return the soup to the pan and reheat to just below boiling point. Taste and add salt if necessary, then add pepper. Add the cream, stir, and serve immediately.

ADAPTING THE SOUP TO OTHER INGREDIENTS

• Carrot – use 8 medium-sized young carrots, ideally from a leafy bunch to be sure they are fresh, sliced thinly on a mandolin. Add at the onion and potato stage, substituting them for the courgettes and lettuce); add lemon juice or (in January) Seville orange juice to counteract the sweetness.

• Jerusalem artichoke – add 10 peeled and thinly sliced Jerusalem artichokes at the onion and potato stage, substituting them for the courgettes and lettuce.

• Potato and onion with peppery leaves – add 5 extra potatoes, cut into small dice, at the onion stage. Substitute them for the courgettes and lettuce. Serve with a ‘pesto’ made from peppery leaves like chopped rocket, mustard leaves (easy to find at farmers’ markets) or exceptionally fresh radish leaves – mixed with chopped walnuts and olive or walnut oil.

• Green garlic – in spring and summer you will see fresh or ‘green garlic’ in markets and some supermarkets. They are soft and can be used whole. Substitute the garlic clove and lettuce with 2 heads of green garlic, sliced and added with the onion and potato, to make an aromatic and heady soup – only for garlic devotees.

Mind and stomach

My sister Laura is an artist and a talented self-taught cook. It must be her fascination with texture and colour but she has a built-in sense of what is the right and wrong thing to do to any ingredient. She rarely makes anything that needs more than one pan and a gas hob, but everything she makes is fragrant and pretty. She is the mother of my nephew Tom, now at primary school age, who has cerebral palsy and great difficulty eating. While she cooks beautifully when we visit, every day she makes Tom dishes especially designed to tempt him and boost his appetite – and to nourish him. Laura understands completely the link between mind and stomach. When we are miserable or shocked, we always feel it in our gut, while, equally, delicious things can restore contentment. She often approaches food like a scientist, recording what works and what does not.

Toasted garlic bread and squash soup

Years ago Laura pointed out to me that sweet vegetables like squash and pumpkin make slimy, cloying soups unless other textures are added. This recipe uses toasted garlic-rubbed bread, which also dilutes the sweetness to just the right degree.

SERVES 4

3 walnut-sized lumps of butter

450g/1lb – 1 whole butternut – squash, peeled and diced

2 garlic cloves, pounded to a paste with salt

2 slices of ciabatta or white sourdough bread, toasted until golden

1 litre/1¾ pints water, at boiling point

salt and black pepper

90ml/6 tablespoons whipping cream

Melt the butter in a large pan, add the squash and cook for 3 minutes. Meanwhile, rub the garlic paste onto the bread and allow it to sink in. Add the water to the pan and bring to the boil. Cook for about 10 minutes until the squash is tender. Add the bread and allow to soften in the soup. Transfer all to a food processor and liquidise until very smooth. Clean the pan and put back the soup. Taste and add salt if necessary, then add pepper. Add the cream and reheat. Serve hot – this soup stores well.

THE SAME SOUP – WITH ALTERNATIVE VEGETABLES

Replace the squash with the equivalent weight of pumpkin (with 2 extra garlic cloves because it is so sweet), sweet potato, turnip, celeriac or golden beetroot.

BROTHS

My mother always shopped at a butcher’s, even when supermarket shopping was at the height of its new-found popularity. True, she had no full-time job (though up to six children to look after, depending who was at home) and could find time to drive to a shop within its 9–5 opening hours in order to buy the best meat. Yet it was remarkable that she dedicated herself to buying meat this way. At that time in the 1970s there was no especial reported concern about animal welfare or hygiene in mass-produced meat. She may as well have trotted off to Safeway with everyone else. She had a keen instinct about what was right, however, and there we would be, at least once a week, standing in a queue.

Bored as I was, I must have learned much while hanging about in that line; overheard snippets that taught, in some kind of gradual osmotic sense, how to buy meat. I watched boning and rolling, found out how many sausages there are in a pound and which were the prime cuts. Occasionally I heard my mother and other customers complain that a Sunday roasting joint had been a little disappointing, or the butcher explain how long a leg of lamb needed in the oven. Thanks to this, I emerged from my childhood partly food-educated. Aged 18 I could walk into a butcher’s and make an informed decision about what to buy.

Today mothers often leave their children behind when shopping, mainly because they shop at supermarkets who sell thousands of ‘lines’ of food. With so many of these designed to appeal to the pestering, articulate three-year-old in the trolley seat, a traipse around a superstore can be very wearing. No wonder we give in and buy the packet of crisps or whatever they are whining on about. Worse than this is the fact that there is rarely anyone to talk to in supermarkets who has a professional knowledge about ingredients, so a child misses out on those overheard tidbits that form part of their food education.

In the 1980s thousands of these small shops, butchers in particular, closed, thanks to the advent of the superstore. Supermarket chillers tend only to sell unchallenging cuts. Where are the kidneys, the liver, the trotters and tongues? And where are the bones? Without a supply of bones I cannot make my kitchen work. Making stock from bones underpins so much of what I cook because the small effort it takes produces an ingredient that will bring others to life in minutes, notably soups and rice dishes.

I do not know how many times I have been rescued by a supply of broth or stock in the fridge. Knowing it is there reduces the panic I feel if dinner is not planned and needs to be made within the next 45 minutes. The flavours it adds to soups and anything braised, including risotto, give these dishes resonance they cannot have with water. There are many examples of ways to use stock in Halfway to a Meal.

When meat stock is the star of an epic, big-meal soup, its flavour echoes for hours in the mouth and for much longer in the memory. The following recipes are much better for it. Few take longer than 20 minutes to prepare – as long as you have a meat stock supply (see page 390). You can buy fresh meat stock ready made – but read the label to check the ingredients are natural. You may want to take a look at the salt content per 100ml. Keeping in mind that 6g is the maximum recommended for an adult each day, a salty shop-bought stock can do more harm than good.

Here are two extremely simple, everyday broths . . .

Golden broth with parsley and pearl barley

A soup I eat often for lunch. I make a pot of it earlier in the week and heat it when needed. It costs little, and with a supply of stock to hand, it takes only 20 minutes to make. Its golden colour not only comes from browning the poultry bones when making stock (see page 390), but also from adding ground coriander seed, a subtle spice with the ability to ‘join up’ the flavours of the various ingredients as they simmer in the pan.

SERVES 4

2 tablespoons olive oil or butter

1 onion, finely chopped

1 teaspoon ground coriander seed

200g/7oz pearl barley

1.2 litres/2 pints chicken or vegetable stock

salt and black pepper

flat-leaf parsley, chopped, to serve

Heat the fat in a pan and add the onion, coriander and pearl barley. Stir over the heat for a minute or two until the onion softens, then add the stock. Bring to the boil and cook for 15–20 minutes until the pearl barley is just tender. Do not boil too vigorously or the liquid will evaporate. Season to taste, then add chopped parsley to each bowlful just before you eat.

Bean and pasta broth

Usually served so thick you could eat it with a fork, this Italian-inspired pasta e fagioli soup can be made with store-cupboard ingredients within minutes – providing there is stock to hand. A little more broth in the ratio is nice – it is good to stick to the basic idea that you sip or drink soup, not load it into your mouth.

SERVES 4

1.2 litres/2 pints meat stock

4 tablespoons olive oil

2 garlic cloves, chopped

pinch of dried rosemary leaves

pinch of dried thyme

1 x 400g/14oz can cannellini, borlotti or white haricot beans, drained

100g/3½oz dried soup pasta

salt and white pepper

To serve: grated mature hard cheese (Grana Padano or Parmesan, mature Cheddar), a little extra olive oil or chilli oil

Heat the stock in a large pan until it boils, then pour into a jug. Warm the oil in the same pan over a low heat and add the garlic. Cook until fragrant, but not coloured, then add the herbs, beans and pasta, and cover with the stock. Bring to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes. Add a little boiling water if the soup is too thick. Season, ladle into bowls and pour a little more olive oil (or chilli oil) over each in a thin stream. Serve the grated cheese separately.

Kitchen note

To use dried beans instead of canned, take half the quantity (200g/7oz), soak in cold water overnight then boil in fresh water for about 1–1½ hours until tender.

THREE SEASONAL SOUPS

A lesson in being instinctive, choosing ingredients yourself from what is in season and making a simple soup thickened with either potatoes, grains or beans. Remember, buying seasonal vegetables when they are in their glut and abundant is always cheaper. An understanding of the seasons is a valuable secret weapon for a cook. Each of these recipes serves 4.

Summer vegetable broth

see PLATE 2

I sometimes add ready-made fresh potato gnocchi (easy to buy in the fresh pasta section of supermarkets or in Italian delis) to this soup, having cooked them first for a few minutes in boiling salted water until they float.

BASE SOUP:

4 tablespoons olive oil

2 rashers smoked streaky bacon, cut into small pieces

2 spring onions, chopped

2 waxy potatoes, washed and cut into small dice

2 large ripe tomatoes, nicked with a knife, put in boiling water for 1 minute then peeled, deseeded and chopped

1 garlic clove, chopped

leaves from 2 sprigs basil or marjoram, torn or chopped

1.2 litres/2 pints chicken or other meat stock

salt and black pepper

fresh pesto sauce, to serve

Plus any 3 or more of the following vegetables: 2 medium courgettes, chopped; handful of French beans, chopped; handful of podded garden peas; handful of mange tout, chopped; small fennel bulb, chopped; 1 kohlrabi, chopped; a few asparagus spears, chopped; butterhead (soft English) lettuce, shredded; 2 kale leaves, shredded

Heat the oil in a large pan over a low heat, then cook the bacon for 2 minutes. Add the onions and potatoes and cook for another 5 minutes. If the potatoes stick to the pan, add half a mug of water. Stir from time to time. Add the tomatoes with the garlic and herbs. Cook for a further 2 minutes; pour in the stock and bring to the boil. When the potatoes are just tender, add the green vegetables. Cook for 3–4 minutes, then taste and add salt if necessary, then add pepper. Serve with fresh pesto sauce.

Kitchen note

You can buy pesto ready made, or simply blend together ground pine nuts, basil leaves, olive oil and grated Parmesan to make your own.

Autumn vegetable ‘harvest’ soup with grains

BASE SOUP:

4 tablespoons olive oil

2 rashers smoked streaky bacon, cut into small pieces

1 onion, chopped

3 tablespoons whole rye, wheat or spelt groats

2 large ripe tomatoes, nicked with a knife, put in boiling water for 1 minute then peeled, deseeded and chopped

1 garlic clove, chopped

2 sprigs thyme

1 teaspoon ground coriander seed

1.2 litres/2 pints chicken or other meat stock

salt and black pepper

To serve: olive oil, Greek-style yoghurt, paprika, black onion seed

Plus any 3 or more of the following vegetables, cut into small pieces: butternut or other squash, marrow, courgette, eating apple, turnip, carrot, kohlrabi, sweet potato, pumpkin, runner beans or green cabbage

Heat the oil in a large pan over a low heat, then cook the bacon for 2 minutes. Add the onion and grains and cook for another 5 minutes. Stir from time to time then add half a mug of water. Add the tomatoes with the garlic, thyme and coriander, followed by any of the other vegetables. Cook for a further 2 minutes; pour in the stock and bring to the boil. Simmer for about 10–15 minutes until the grains and vegetables are tender. Taste and add salt if necessary, then add pepper. Pour over a little olive oil to serve. This soup is also good with the addition of a little Greek yoghurt and a pinch of paprika or black onion seed.

Winter vegetable stew-soup

BASE SOUP:

4 walnut-sized lumps of butter or 4 heaped teaspoons dripping

1 gammon steak or thick piece of cooked ham, cut into large dice

2 onions, chopped

2 large ripe tomatoes, nicked with a knife, put in boiling water for 1 minute then peeled, deseeded and chopped

1 garlic clove, crushed with the back of a knife and peeled leaves from 2 sprigs rosemary and thyme

1 teaspoon ground coriander seed

1.2 litres/2 pints chicken or other meat stock

salt and black pepper

To serve: dry toasted ciabatta or sourdough bread, chilli oil, chopped parsley

Plus about 2 handfuls of any 3 or more of the following vegetables, cut into pieces: potatoes, carrots, swede, parsnips, celeriac, marrow, squash, fennel, endives, chicory, radicchio, Savoy cabbage, Brussels sprouts, black cabbage (cavalo nero)

Heat the butter or dripping in a large pan over a low heat and cook the gammon for 2 minutes. Add the onions and cook for another 5 minutes. Stir from time to time. Add the tomatoes with the garlic, herbs and spice. Cook for a further 2 minutes; add the other chosen vegetables, pour in the stock and bring to the boil. Simmer for 20 minutes until everything is tender. Taste and add salt if necessary, then add pepper. Serve over toasted bread, with chilli oil and parsley, if you like.

Watercress butter dumplings

Add these rich, peppery dumplings to any of the seasonal broths above. Make sure not to make them too large.

MAKES 10 – ENOUGH FOR 4 HELPINGS

125g/4½oz plain flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

pinch of salt

70g/2½oz salted butter, very cold, straight from the fridge leaves from 1 bunch of watercress, chopped (see Kitchen note, below) ice-cold water

Sieve the flour into a bowl with the baking powder and add the salt. Grate the butter (on the coarse section of the grater) and lightly but thoroughly stir into the flour with the watercress. Add just enough water – about 3 tablespoons – to form the mixture into a loose-textured, slightly sticky dough. With floured hands, make 10 small balls. To cook the dumplings, drop them in the simmering broth about 5 minutes before the end of cooking. They will swell and become firm.

Kitchen note

You can leave out the watercress to make plain dumplings. Or add grated horseradish to plain or watercress dumplings and drop them into a wintry broth.

Remedies

Nourishment has become a somewhat wacky science. Fed a constant diet of either shock headlines or news about the latest superfoods, confusion reigns. All fresh foods are essentially super, but eat too much of any and there is bound to be an unpleasant side effect. Lettuce, for example, is from the same family as valerian. Eaten in vast quantities it could potentially send you to sleep. Some foods, however, we really should eat more of. Our mothers always said eat your greens, but did they ever say eat up your mushrooms? Perhaps they would have, had our parents known how highly valued fungi are in every other country in the world where forests were not decimated to make way for cultivated land, as they have been in Britain. In all Asian and mainland European countries, wild and cultivated mushrooms are revered for their medicinal qualities. On a visit to a mushroom farm in Hampshire, I was told by farmer Jane Dick that, even with woodland covering only 4 per cent of the UK, we still need to eat fungi and learn to cultivate a wider variety. She grows and sources an interesting and wide range of delicious mushrooms, species both from Asia and Europe. Together we looked at some scientific studies into the health benefits of fungi. It is well documented, for example, that the protein-bound polysaccharides in shiitake mushrooms protect the immune system from a number of diseases, even cancer. ‘Don’t forget antibiotics are derived from fungi,’ Jane reminded me, motherly in her campaign for a more nutritious diet.

Mushroom broth with sausage, oats and parsley

This soup, dedicated to the revival of mushroom eating, needs lean sausages like Cumberland – very bready, smooth-textured bangers will turn to mush. If you live near an Italian deli, their meaty sausages are ideal. Otherwise a few chunks of a smoked German-style sausage would be good.

SERVES 4

4 tablespoons olive oil or 2 walnut-sized lumps of butter

1 onion, finely chopped

2 garlic cloves, chopped

4 tablespoons whole oat groats or pearled grain (barley, spelt, durum wheat, etc, from wholefood shops)

4 lean sausages or smoked sausages, cut into bite-size pieces

450g/1lb shiitake mushrooms, chopped (or another type of cultivated mushroom, if you like)

1 litre/1¾ pints fresh stock

salt and black pepper

chopped flat-leaf parsley, to serve

Heat the oil or butter in a large pan and add the onion and garlic. Cook over a medium heat until soft but not coloured, then add the grains and sausage. Fry for 1 minute longer, stirring, then add the mushrooms. Cook for 2 minutes, stirring, then add the stock. Cook for 20 minutes, until the grains are just tender. Taste and add salt if necessary, then add pepper. Serve with chopped parsley.

Leek and potato soup with cream

The difference between a good and a bad soup can be all about texture. Smooth soups are what they are but when making a ‘stew-soup’ it matters that the vegetables are cut in a way that makes them nicer to eat. I love the grassy allium flavour of leeks, but have a hatred of leeks cut into rings or, worse, left whole to become limp, soaked and slimy once cooked. Cut into small squares, however, their layered flesh sits neatly in a broth with squares of potato, further transformed by a swirl of rich tarragon-scented cream.

SERVES 4

4 walnut-sized lumps of butter

4 medium leeks, quartered lengthways, then sliced to make small pieces – and washed

approximately 20 new potatoes, washed and cut into small dice

1 litre/1¾ pints fresh stock

salt and white pepper

FOR THE CREAM:

150ml/¼ pint whipping cream

2 egg yolks

leaves from 3 sprigs tarragon, chopped

Melt the butter and add the leeks. Cook over a medium heat for 1–2 minutes, then add the potatoes. Cook, stirring occasionally, for another 2 minutes, then add the stock. Bring to the boil and simmer for about 10 minutes until the potato is tender. Taste and add salt if necessary, then add pepper. Meanwhile, combine the ‘cream’ ingredients thoroughly in a separate bowl. Serve the soup hot, stirring in some of the cream mixture at the last minute.

Those dying leaves

In the bottom drawer of the fridge lies many a dirty secret. I have a habit of buying too many vegetables and not using them. They hide there, in their bags or loose, composting shamefully away. This infuriates my husband, so I have to throw out their rotting corpses when he is not looking. For this reason I find vegetable box schemes hard to sign up to, no matter how much I admire them. I suffer from a condition I call aspirational greed. I buy things not because we need them but because I think we as a family should be eating them. There are vegetables I find incredibly beautiful on the shelf – big bluey-green cabbages, for example. But two weeks later they are still unused and, worse, losing their initial goodness. The children are lukewarm about boiled cabbage, even beside a roast. Then I discover cabbage soup. In a soup, everything everyone loathes about cabbage disappears. It becomes tender and yielding; it benefits from the amalgamated flavours of the other ingredients and, amazingly, it looks pretty – especially the dark-coloured varieties.

Green cabbage and pickled duck garbure

You must look overseas for interesting cabbage soup. Nigel Slater loves the purity of the Portuguese caldo verde, a humble, rough-textured pot of potato and cabbage, seasoned with garlic and chorizo sausage. Thanks to cookery writer Jane Grigson, I have discovered the earthy peasant soups of the Auvergne, and another particularly delicious one, the ‘garbure’ from Gascony, a nearly perfect stew-soup made with confit (preserved) duck legs. You can buy confit duck legs in tins, or make them (see page 417). Duck legs are an economical ingredient; the costly part of a duck is the breast meat. If you cannot get confit duck, you can use salt pork, ham or garlic (Toulouse) sausage in this recipe. Ultimately, what really makes it taste so nice is the duck fat.

SERVES 4

3 tablespoons duck fat

4 rashers unsmoked ‘green’ streaky bacon, cut into small dice

2 onions, finely chopped

4 potatoes, cut into small dice

half a green cabbage, thinly shredded

4 confit duck legs, any extra fat and skin removed (see page 417)

1.4 litres/2½ pints fresh stock

To serve: 4 thin slices toasted rye or sourdough bread, 4 tablespoons grated Gruyère cheese

Melt the duck fat in a large pan, then fry the bacon until it begins to crisp. Add the onions and cook until they begin to turn pale gold; put in the potatoes, stir-fry for 1 minute over a medium heat, then add the cabbage. Cook for another 2 minutes, put in the confit duck legs and pour in the stock. Bring to the boil and simmer for 30 minutes. Serve the soup hot, with the toasted bread on top and cheese scattered over.

Chickpea and tomato ten-minute soup

see PLATE 3

Lunch is at home for me because that is my workplace. It is a much-anticipated break in the middle of a long day’s work and I find it matters enormously that I have something good made from good ingredients, which suits my mood and is also nutritionally balanced. I rarely eat sandwiches, though the occasional egg and cress roll is irresistible, because they make me sleepy. So if we have had something with pulses or rice the night before, I warm it, cheer it up with some fresh vegetables and may eat it with some yoghurt sauce or herbs.

I like to make fresh soups at lunchtime, taking no more than about 15 minutes. But it is time I enjoy. It can be meditative and, being my own boss, I am always looking for something to do that is not work. Alan Bennett admits to cleaning shoes and cleaning out the dust filter in the tumble-drier when he is meant to be writing scripts. Cookery writers make soup, and particularly this one, which seems to hit all the right places as a middle-of-the-day meal. The secret is in adding the sugar, so you do not have to wait so long for the tomatoes to sweeten.

SERVES 4

4 tablespoons olive oil

2 garlic cloves, chopped

300ml/½ pint passata

1 x 400g/14oz can chickpeas

1 teaspoon ground coriander seed

½ teaspoon paprika

1 teaspoon sugar

300ml/½ pint stock

salt and black pepper

juice of half a lemon

To serve: extra olive oil, wholemilk yoghurt, parsley or other fresh herbs

Heat the oil in a large pan and add the garlic, passata, chickpeas, spices and sugar. Cook over a medium heat for a few minutes, stirring occasionally, then add the stock. Bring to the boil, then simmer for 5 minutes. Taste and add salt if necessary, then add pepper. Stir in the lemon juice. Either eat this soup with the chickpeas left whole, or mash them a little with a potato-mashing tool. You can also transfer the soup to a liquidiser or food processor and process to something smoother. Serve with a little olive oil poured over, a spoonful of yoghurt and some fresh herbs.

Clam, cider and potato chowder

My mother used to trawl through recipe books, looking for ideas that were practical and contained ingredients she could buy in our local market town (incidentally a very narrow remit, yet still a familiar one to many, all these years later). She was always good at spotting not only a decent, do-able recipe in the depths of some book or other, she also had a talent for picking out ideas that would look pretty. She used to cook a lovely white fish chowder, made with monkfish, prawns and waxy potatoes. With a few spikes of spring onion here and there, it was a lovely palette of pink, green and white. Monkfish was cheap then. No one appreciated it as they do now. It is now popular, expensive and over-fished in places. Clams, on the other hand, have all the sweetness this stew-soup needs, yet are easy to buy, quite economical – and ecologically sound.

SERVES 4

3 walnut-sized lumps of butter

1 celery stick, with its leaves if possible, finely sliced

1 large leek

1kg/2lb 4oz new or young waxy potatoes (yellow fleshed are best), washed and quartered

600ml/1 pint fish, vegetable or chicken stock

600ml/1 pint dry cider

1kg/2lb 4oz venus or other small clams, washed under running water

300ml/½ pint whipping cream or crème fraiche

fried white bread, to serve

Melt the butter in a pan and add the celery and the white part of the leek, sliced and washed beforehand (finely chop the tender green part of the leek to add later). Sauté the vegetables over a gentle heat, then add the potatoes. Cook for another 2 minutes, adding a ladleful of stock to prevent the potatoes sticking.

Add the remaining stock and the cider, and bring to the boil. Cook until the potatoes are just tender, then add the cream and all the clams. Add the remaining green part of the leek, put a lid on the pan, bring it to the boil and cook for about 3–5 minutes. The clams should open fully – discard any that do not. If you can, remove some – or even all – of the clam shells, leaving the meat in the soup. Eat with hot fried bread.

Kitchen note

Cockles, mussels or queen scallops can also be used, even mixed. I sometimes make this soup with raw organic tiger prawns.

Coconut tea

As much as I love the clever, inspired cooking of southern Europe, at least once a week we eat something at home made with coconut, lemongrass and warming spices like cumin and cinnamon. I cannot pretend to be an expert on this kind of cooking. I am not well travelled enough to have seen much of it in situ and I have relied on books to give me the basics of authentic South-east Asian cooking. But then it does not really matter. When you do travel to the places where these dishes come from, you find they are not made the same way in any one place, and you can adapt, providing the raw materials you use are genuine – or appropriate.

Coconut is under-used in the West yet processed the right way it is a highly nourishing ingredient. I avoid canned coconut milk, which often contains starch and emulsifiers to give it a creamy texture, and prefer to make a ‘tea’ from the flesh. Travelling in Sri Lanka this year I had breakfast with Champika Sajeewani, mother of two-year-old Sewwandi. Champika’s family are part of an organic farming producer group. They grow tea and spices and their products have Fairtrade certification.

Coconut spiced soup with chicken

Champika is known for her delicate cooking, and she showed me how to brew fresh coconut flesh to make a stock to add to curries. I cannot buy fresh coconut in the UK but I have used unsweetened desiccated coconut to very decent effect. The bonus is that you have a byproduct of soaked coconut to use in biscuits, or to make the raw pickle that is added to this gently spicy soup.

SERVES 4

4 chicken thighs, deboned, skinned and sliced

1 tablespoon raw coconut oil or olive oil

4 garlic cloves, chopped

1 stalk lemongrass, crushed with a rolling pin but left whole

1 medium onion, finely chopped

4cm/1½in piece fresh ginger, grated

2–3 teaspoons mild curry powder

¼–½ teaspoon ground cayenne pepper

200g/7oz desiccated coconut or fresh coconut flesh if available – soaked in 1.2 litres/2 pints boiling water for 5 minutes to make a ‘tea’

salt (optional)

FOR THE RELISH:

4 tablespoons soaked coconut flesh

1 handful of mint leaves

1–2 shredded, deseeded red or green chillies

1 chopped shallot

Cut the chicken into small pieces and put in a pan with the oil, garlic, lemongrass, onion, ginger and spices. Warm it all through until the onion softens, then add the strained coconut ‘tea’. Bring to the boil and simmer the broth for about 10 minutes until the chicken is cooked. Meanwhile, combine the ingredients for the relish.

Taste the broth and add salt if necessary. Serve hot with a spoonful of the dry coconut relish, removing the stick of lemongrass from the soup beforehand.

Kitchen note

It is fine to substitute the desiccated coconut with 1 block of coconut cream melted in 1 litre/1¾ pints boiling water. Blocks of coconut cream are easy to find in ethnic shops and supermarkets and are the most natural form of processed coconut, better than canned coconut milk. One-third of the block is fat, the rest flesh and you can choose how much of each you want to include. Adding the fat will make this soup richer.

A sub for ‘cuisine grandmère’

Just thinking about Jacqueline makes me hungry. I have to come clean and admit that the grandmother’s table I talk of so nostalgically in this book was not heaving with food she cooked herself. My grandmother could barely make toast. She ran a business with her husband in France and they employed a live-in housekeeper who cooked. Jacqueline was Belgian, and in kitchen matters she was my grandmother’s body-double and collaborator for every meal. Only she did all the work. She was married but had no children, and my grandmother was convinced she was better at French food than the French themselves. ‘Except she can’t make omelettes,’ she complained. Jacqueline shopped each morning, stopping for a tall glass of blond beer in the bar next to the épicerie. She was like a mother to all of the grandchildren. She dished out advice, some of it remarkably unscientific. ‘Les cornichons,’ she whispered to me, watching me take the eighth handful of baby pickled gherkins from the jar, ‘make you infertile.’

On other matters she was spot on. When my grandmother sold up and moved back to Britain, after 40 years in France, Jacqueline was gloomy. ‘England is a horrible place,’ she warned (she had never been there). ‘Madame will die if she lives there.’ She did, within two years. Jacqueline came to the funeral in London, her first sad visit. ‘I told her she would die,’ she said, crying furiously. Going into the kitchen of my grandmother’s London flat after her death, I noticed there was still a sticker seal across the door of the microwave, bought for her new kitchen. It had never been used.

Jacqueline’s great dishes were many. Her roast chicken with its dark juices, her skinless tomato and fine bean salad, her pommes frites which she cooked in small crisp batches, her violently red raspberry ice and her airy circle of choux pastry that she filled with tiny mushrooms cooked in cream. Everything she made I have cooked again and again throughout my life, but without her direct instructions. I have tried to recreate that twist in her method that made the particular thing so good: the extra tang of Dijon mustard in her salad dressing and the generous quantity she would use, for example; there was always a pool of it in the bottom of the olive-wood salad bowl, with delicious skinned tomato segments and leaves of butterhead lettuce – floppy English-style not crisp curly types – literally drowning in it. She always served chicken with its natural cooking juices, none of that last-minute gravy-making nonsense. Looking back, I think her talent lay in tasting her food, seasoning it properly and using herbs. She also adhered to a fairly classical road – tarragon went with chicken and nothing else, for example. There was a lot of safety and comfort in this approach for us.

I tried to get her mashed potato right on many occasions and could make a passable potful, but it was not 100 per cent. It did not have that slightly baked taste that made hers so good, or the sloppy, almost pourable texture. Then one day I rediscovered it, thanks to my son Jack.

Flawless mashed potato

Jack’s mashed potato is puréed, strictly speaking. He watched it being made in Anthony Demetre’s modern bistrot, Arbutus in London’s Soho, where he did a few days’ training, and came home and made it. It had that unmistakable Jacqueline-ness. It is almost more dairy than it is tuber, rich and slightly runny with the creaminess cut with the hint of lemon that the right potatoes will give. Always try to buy the red-skinned types for mash if you can; they have perfect texture and acidity. Here are the secrets of Jacqueline’s mash, excavated by Jack.

SERVES 8

2kg/4lb 8oz red-skinned potatoes, such as Desiree or Romano

1 litre/1¾ pints wholemilk

250g/9oz butter

sea salt

Peel the potatoes and boil in salted water until tender. Some people cook them with skins on and peel them afterwards, but this is more time-consuming; as long as you let the potatoes steam-dry after boiling, peeling before cooking will make as good a purée.

Allow the potatoes to sit in the colander for 10 minutes. They do not have to be kept warm. Clean out the pan and add the milk and butter. Heat until the butter is melted. Turn off the heat. Place a food mill (sometimes called a mouli) over the pan and grate the potato into the milk.

Place back over a medium heat and whip the potato slowly with a spatula. It will begin to heat up and eventually to cook a little, puffing out great bubbles and leaving the sides of the pan. Continue like this – it can be an achy few minutes. Be careful not to overheat the pan and actually burn the potatoes – you want the mash to become only hot enough to erupt with pockets of steam. This is a dish you need to stand over, but not for long.

You can add more butter and even cream if you want, for even richer potatoes, but make sure any addition is well heated through. Season with salt to taste. Keep hot in the pan, with a teacloth placed over the top, and the lid on top of that.

Eat with anything from cheese to hot ham, grilled gammon or bacon, sausages, frankfurters, faggots, haggis, grilled chops and roasts.

MORE MASH

You can use the above method to make mash from other roots. In most cases it is always politic to add a peeled potato or two, to help the texture become velvety and smooth. Each quantity serves 4 generously:

• Parsnips with clotted cream – peel, dice and add 2 peeled potatoes for texture. For 1kg/2lb 4oz parsnips, use 200ml/7fl oz clotted cream.

• Swede and butter – this is my favourite alternative mash. Just add about 175g/6oz butter to 1kg/2lb 4oz mashed swede. Peel and dice the swede before boiling.

• Carrot and crème fraiche – peel and slice 1 kg/2lb 4oz carrots; boil with 2 peeled, diced potatoes until soft and add 100g/3½oz butter and 150ml/¼ pint crème fraiche.

• Beetroot and sour cream – bake 1kg/2lb 4oz whole beetroot until tender (oven set to about 200°C/400°F/Gas 6). Put through the food mill and reheat with 150ml/¼ pint sour cream.

BOILED FLOURY POTATOES

The purée route can be for purists. Roughly crushed, boiled floury potatoes, with an invading force of melted butter penetrating some but not all of their flesh, is as satisfying as the most refined gratin dauphinoise.

Look out for the traditional varieties, now in supermarkets as well as sold by specialist growers at farmers’ markets. Arran Victory are one of the best, with bluish skins, or Red Duke of York.

Roughly mashed haddock and potato with spring onion

A sort of lazy fish pie, which all happens in one pan.

SERVES 4

1kg/2 lb 4oz floury potatoes

150g/5½oz butter

2 tablespoons double cream or crème fraiche

600g/1lb 6oz smoked undyed haddock

2 spring onions, chopped into small rings

sea salt and black pepper

Peel the potatoes, then boil in salted water until soft. Drain them and while they sit in the colander, steaming, melt the butter in the same pan. Add the cream, haddock and spring onions. Cook over a low heat until the haddock flakes, then add the potatoes. Roughly stir, then season with some salt – watch the amount because the haddock will be salty – and plenty of black pepper.

Mashed sweet potato with green chilli and coriander relish

Bravely growing in our cold climate, the sweet potatoes I pick up in weekend markets deserve to be eaten for supper. I like their slightly sticky, floury flesh, even their alarming colour. When I was at school I knitted a fiery sweater with unflattering raglan sleeves in my needlework class. At the time I was unable to place the colour, chosen by my mother to ‘match my green eyes’ – it was darker than orange, lighter than terracotta. Now I realise it was definitely sweet potato.

SERVES 4

4 sweet potatoes

200g/7oz butter, melted

sea salt and black pepper

2.5cm/1in piece fresh ginger, grated

2 spring onions, chopped into small rings

2 red chillies, deseeded and chopped

6 sprigs coriander, plus roots if possible, chopped

Boil the sweet potatoes whole in salted water for about 15 minutes or until tender, then drain, cool a little and cut in half. Place on plates and mash the flesh while it is still in the skin, just roughly – it really does not matter if it loses its shape. Pour over some melted butter, add a few pinches of the other ingredients and eat while hot.

More pulses and grains

Solutions to the problem of feeding nourishing meals to many mouths are found all over the world, and often come in the form of pulses and grains. The British are always surprised at the quantity of rice, dal, noodles or pasta consumed by individuals in Asia or southern Europe. In Asia the average annual consumption of rice per person is 80 kilos, for example, while in the West it is less than 5 kilos. While we generally seek protein from meat and dairy foods, no family in India goes without a daily dish of dal, made either with lentils, yellow split peas or chickpeas. These are the most valuable foods in terms of survival but the least expensive to buy.

The best of the kill

I admit having some trouble persuading my children to eat dal, although they enjoy the chickpea and tomato soup on page 37. I find that in our house we spend more on ingredients for the children’s suppers than on our own. It can sometimes feel as if Dominic and I, and anyone visiting, exist on pulses so that Jack and Lara can have their roast chicken and breaded white fish. I view this as one of my many failures as a mother who cooks – but it is also second nature to give your child the best of the kill, as it were. My mother used to put lentils on the table, to a horrified response from all her six children, but we gradually came round, one by one, and if you visited any of my siblings now you’d find pulses on the table at least once a week. Influence can be a very slow process.

BRAISED PULSES WITH SPICES, ONION AND BUTTER – DAL

There are dishes I often describe with the fondness I feel for a favourite piece of warm clothing. Tarka dal, a dish of lentils or peas, braised with buttery onions, a gentle mix of spices and herbs, is a caressing bowl of food. It is not just the low cost that makes it immaculate; dal takes little time to cook. It packs into one meal so much of the nourishment a person needs in a day and releases a slow trickle of energy, going a long way to prevent a ‘picker’ like me from raiding the bread bin in the middle of the afternoon. But it is also, and most essentially, just unutterably delicious to eat. I love recipes that build with colour and fragrance as they are made: the scent of the cumin as it simmers in foaming butter; the excitement and zing of ginger; the fruity heat of garlic which, when added, must not brown, and the transforming technicolor drama of turmeric.

I cook the dal separately, and keep a store in the fridge so I can make small quantities of freshly prepared dal when needed. (See page 383 – Halfway to a Meal.) There are various pulses and peas to choose from and some, like chickpeas, are best bought in cans simply because they take a long time to cook. As long as the pulse is hulled (the skin removed), it can be made into dal. The most economical are red and green lentils, which can be cooked quickly from scratch. Yellow split peas, which are also very cheap to buy, have a delicious flavour of peas but with none of the floury texture that I find makes other slow-cooked peas taste stodgy and unpleasant. Chickpeas, bought in the can, are a good beginner’s dal, being sweet-tasting and easy and cheap to buy. In India, Bengal gram, a type of small chickpea, is a very popular dal.

Spiced butter and yellow split peas

see PLATE 4

This is my version of tarka dal, inspired by a North Indian recipe. Use yellow split peas or choose another hulled dal or gram, or drained canned chickpeas. Tarka roughly translates as ‘spiced butter’, patiently cooked with the aromatic ingredients and onion for about 10 minutes without burning to allow all the flavours to bind together. Indian cooks view this as a very important part of perfecting the flavour of their food.

SERVES 4

250g/9oz yellow split peas

3 tablespoons butter

2 teaspoons black mustard seed

1 tablespoon cumin seed

1 onion, finely chopped or grated

1–4 whole green chillies, deseeded and chopped

4cm/1½in piece fresh ginger, peeled and cut into matchsticks

3 garlic cloves, chopped

¼ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground turmeric

2 teaspoons garam masala

2 teaspoons ground coriander seed

5 large tomatoes, chopped

100ml/3½fl oz water

leaves from 4 sprigs fresh coriander, plus chopped stalks and roots extra melted butter, to serve

Put the yellow split peas in a pan and cover with approximately 1 litre/1¾ pints water. Boil for 40 minutes, skimming away the foam that rises to the top, adding more water if necessary. Drain in a colander and mash a little with a fork to break up the dal slightly. Set aside.

Melt the butter in the same pan and add the mustard seed and the cumin. Cook over a low heat – cumin burns quite easily – and then add the onion, chilli and ginger. Cook for about 3 minutes before adding the garlic, salt and spices, followed by the tomato. Add the water and cook for about 10 minutes. The contents of the pan should look glossy and be very fragrant. Stir in the dal (cooked yellow split peas), cook for another 10 minutes (add a splash more water if the dal seems a little dry), then add the fresh coriander and about 1–2 tablespoons extra melted butter at the end. Eat with rice or flatbreads. Sometimes I add a little chicken stock to make a soup.

Everyday mountain lentils

This is a dish we eat all the time at home for lunch, with some Greek-style yoghurt or fresh goat’s curd, and usually with a few leaves of parsley scattered on top. It is not unlike the lentils my mother bravely put on the table when we were children, where they were received with the same enthusiasm as algebra homework. I am devoted to these lentils now, eating them often with roast meat, grilled fish – almost anything in fact. Ground coriander seed is my favourite spice. I love the way it binds the flavours of the braise, releasing a restrained earthiness.

SERVES 4

4 tablespoons olive oil

1 onion, finely chopped

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

2 celery sticks with leaves, finely chopped

3 teaspoons ground coriander seed

250g/9oz Puy or other small lentils with blue-green speckled skins

salt and black pepper

Heat the oil in a saucepan and add the onion, garlic, celery and coriander. Cook over a low heat for about 3 minutes, then add the lentils. Cook for another 2 minutes, cover well with water and simmer for about 25–35 minutes until the lentils are just tender. Add more water if necessary, but be careful not to overcook the lentils. When they are done, tip the contents of the pan into a bowl and add a dash of olive oil to stop the cooking process. Season with salt and pepper. Eat hot or cold. These lentils will keep in the fridge for about 3 days.

Rice rescue

Rarely a week passes without my reaching for short-grain arborio rice to make a risotto. It is a dish that epitomises economy and eating for comfort. I made my first risotto in 1989. I had watched my mother make it, using Elizabeth David’s recipe from Italian Food. I bought a copy and followed the recipe to the letter, and it worked beautifully. David’s recipe, simple and true to the northern Italian original, yielded a pan of buttery rice, each grain having absorbed wine and chicken stock but without losing something to bite on. Risotto should never become like porridge. I added saffron to that first pan, and still love the way the exotic scent of the roasted crocus stamens combines with the Parmesan and butter. David issued the Italian rule that no more than two extra ingredients should be added, but that still leaves a vast risotto menu to explore. Two methods for making risotto can be found on pages 383–421, along with suggestions for added ingredients.

Polenta

I admit I did not join the ranks of those who raved about polenta when the craze for River Café-style food hit the UK. I think I had an unfortunate experience, and my mind was poisoned by a bland batch. I did not touch the stuff for years and ignored all encouragement to try it. I did not discover until much later that good polenta has real character in its flavour. When, only two years ago, I tried it out on the children in an attempt to cook something cheap and different for them, it got the thumbs-up from one child (typical) – but I was smitten.

Instant polenta

Traditional polenta takes up to an hour to cook, slowly bubbling like volcanic lava in a pan (see page 109). It is, admittedly, the most delicious, but good-quality instant polenta takes 5–8 minutes to cook and has a firm place in this chapter. After cooking, you can eat the ‘wet’ polenta immediately with Parmesan or sweet cooked tomato (see page 400) or with fresh cheese, meat stews, sausages, grilled fish, stir-fried greens – the list of things that match polenta is infinite. Alternatively, pour the ‘wet’ polenta onto a board and allow it to cool. It will form a firm loaf and can be sliced and grilled. I buy the popular Italian brand Polenta Valsugana from supermarkets.

1.5 litres/2½ pints water

375g/13oz polenta

2 teaspoons salt

To serve: Parmesan, and extra virgin olive oil or melted butter

Bring the water to the boil, then, while stirring with a wooden spoon, slowly add the polenta and salt, pouring into the water in a thin stream. The mixture will immediately begin to thicken to a paste-like consistency. Continue to stir over a medium heat for 5–8 minutes or until the polenta begins to come away from the side of the pan. Serve immediately, with Parmesan and extra virgin olive oil or melted butter.

GRILLED POLENTA

As soon as the wet polenta is cooked and coming away from the side of the pan, pour it onto a clean (preferably wooden) board, large enough to accommodate the amount. Leave to cool. It will set firm when cold. Cut it into slices and grill on both sides in an oiled grill pan. Cooked polenta will keep for up to 4 days, wrapped in greaseproof paper in the fridge. It tends to sweat a little water in storage, so pat it dry before grilling to prevent hot spitting fat.

GOOD TO EAT WITH POLENTA

With wet polenta – braised meat, sausages, grilled kidneys or pork liver, grilled fish, sautéed spring greens with sausage, finished with a little wine (see page 172), mushrooms cooked with red wine and butter, sweet cooked tomato (page 400). Put a little fresh grated Parmesan on the table, too. Add fresh parsley if you are not using Parmesan.

With grilled polenta – sweet cooked tomato (page 400), sautéed chicory with garlic, parsley and grated cheese, sautéed mushrooms, grilled courgettes and aubergines, sautéed tomatoes with garlic, butter and basil, crisp bacon or pancetta and Parmesan, rocket and Parmesan salad, fresh tomato salad (page 146), chickpeas and rocket (page 149).

Kitchenella: The secrets of women: heroic, simple, nurturing cookery - for everyone

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