TOMATO PURÉE
There are many ways of using up a tin of tomato purée, and it should be used within a week once it is opened, even though it is, as it should be, poured into a glass jar and closed with a non-corrosive lid, as with all acid foods.
Use it to make into tomato savoury ketchup.
Dilute it with a little water, and add a spot of Worcestershire sauce to make a tomato juice cocktail. This should be very cold.
Dilute it with vegetable juices and flavour it with onion to make a savoury jelly.
A spoonful or two added to a meat casserole gives it excellent flavour and good colour.
Any vegetable or meat stock, thickened with flour or not, can be made into a rich tomato soup by putting in a half cupful of tomato purée and letting it come to the boil to sterilize it. Add any milk or cream to this only to cool it. If the milk is boiled with tomato it will curdle.
TOMATO PASTE
This is a very concentrated form of purée so should be used with discretion and diluted quite a lot. It is so good, so economical, so compact and easy to store that I buy it when I can get it—the smallest tins possible, as they last so well.
SAVOURY TOMATO KETCHUP
This is one of my favourite dressings over a dish of rice, spaghetti or noodles, all the year round. I can use tomato purée from a tin when the tomatoes are out of season, and, as the year revolves, I use the different kinds of onion which are available—spring onions, shallots, the matured winter onions, leeks and garlic. (See Rice, p. 39 and Noodles, p. 40.)
A peeled section of GARLIC is squashed with the back of a spoon on the cooking plate. The tomato purée is added with a shake of powdered clove or ginger, pepper and salt, and made hot over the heat. And that is all.
The white top of the LEEK must be very finely shredded and simmered for a minute or two with the tomato, with a few ground black peppers and maybe a few fennel seeds with salt to flavour it.
The SPRING ONIONS are better uncooked, as the green stalks harden with cooking. So they should be chopped and added to the hot tomato.
The flavour of the ONION is altered and deepened if it is fried slightly in a knob of margarine or a little olive oil before the tomato is added. Sometimes I chop a piece of apple into it as well, and stir in a dozen or more sultanas, a pinch of thyme, red pepper and a bayleaf.
I always like the dish of rice surrounded by a ring of watercress or showered with chopped parsley.
VINEGAR
To prevent the vinegar becoming fertile—(the slippery little mothery plant that grows in it)—I boil it to sterilize it.
SPICED. I boil a teaspoonful of mixed spice in a pint of vinegar for five minutes, and bottle it when it is cold, corking it tightly. Boil without lid on pan.
GARLIC. Any part of a garlic section I have left over—and they vary in size so that I don’t always want a whole one—I put it into a bottle of sterilized vinegar and keep it also corked.
CAPERS. Just when the petals have fallen off my nasturtium flowers I put the seeds into a little bottle of spiced vinegar. This transforms them to pickled “capers” (a good imitation) in a week.
PICKLED ONION. Any portion of onion I don’t use is put into a little jar to become pickled in a week or less.
PICKLED CUCUMBER. Any chunks of cucumber can go in too. Vinegar is a good preservative.
PICKLED BEETROOT. This must be pickled separately as it turns the vinegar a rich red. It keeps well in the more mildly flavoured juice from a tin of sweet-sour gherkins.
RE-USING VINEGAR. All these things dilute the vinegar so that it loses its power to preserve. So I boil it with the lid off to reduce the water content before using it a second time.
*
Here I came to a full stop. Not that my friend would stop her happy pottering, but it was all she had written out—or rather, all that I could decipher. But I tried all her recipes to make sure I had transcribed them accurately. So far, I found them good.
VI
THE GRASS WIDOWER
“At last I can cook it the way I like it,” he said. She, his fascinating, very young wife had gone home to mother for her annual stay. No glancing shafts of wit or suggestion had yet scratched the surface of her self-confidence in her own brand of “fancy” cooking, which flouted so many of the basic rules. He hated to discourage her, but he recalled often the meals his dear mother had cooked—salt, butter, pepper, no more. He would now do the same.
He wasn’t very successful at first. He always seemed to be hungry. “What she calls my waste-line will soon waste away altogether”, he told himself, half in hope, half in fear. One maxim was born of his initial ineptitude—“Store or you starve.” So he bought a lot of tinned foods, fruits, sweetcorn on the cob, green beans and peas, soups, ham, tongue, cream and jams.
These were all very well, but nothing that came out of them matched his enjoyment of a thick fillet steak, lightly grilled either side, so that the blood ran out of it as it was cut. But fillet steak was too infrequent a find. His next discovery of very simply cooked food was fish, and this he grew to depend on a good deal, with a great deal of pleasure. I will set out as nearly as possible the ways he cooked it.
PLAICE, FILLETED (POACHED OR STEAMED)
A lump of butter (or margarine) is spread on a deep soup plate. The fillets of plaice lightly salted are put over that, skinny side up. Another plate covers that, and the “sandwich” is set over a saucepan containing boiling water. In ten or fifteen minutes (depending on the thickness of the fillets) the plaice should be cooked. The prong of a fork inserted near the skin is the test to see if it is yielding. Too much cooking will bring all the white opaque substance out of the fish and reduce the flavour. It will, of course, flow into the buttery juice on the plate, which is used for eating from, and a piece of soft bread will absorb everything without waste.
DOVER SOLE, POACHED IN BUTTER
This is cooked exactly in the same way as the plaice, when it is filleted. If it should be a cutlet—a chunk cut across the bone—or whole, it may take as long as twenty minutes to soften. The fork in this case is inserted near the bone to test if it is done. The flesh should come away from the bone easily. Because of the rich calcium content of bones, it is more nourishing to eat fish cooked with the bones in.
HALIBUT, STEAMED OR FRIED
STEAMED. Halibut is so thick usually, even when one asks that the cutlets should be cut thin, that it will take sometimes as long as twenty minutes to soften right through by steaming. It is always best to test it beforehand, however, in case it should overcook.
FRIED. As white fish contains no oil (it is all in the liver), some richness may be given to it, without destroying the sea flavour, by frying it in margarine after dipping it in flour. When the melted margarine is hot in the frying pan (the glass fireproof ones are nice to eat from), the cutlet is put in. A plate or a lid over the top keeps the heat consistent and cooks the fish right through, but the consequent moisture will prevent it from becoming brown. To achieve this the lid must be removed. When the moisture evaporates the underneath will become brown, so the fish should be turned once to let the other side become brown too. It is delicious cold, but must be skinned while hot.
WHITING
A cutlet from the larger fish is so much easier to manipulate than the whole of a smaller fish such as whiting, which, though it is cooked in half the time, takes twice the time to eat—picking one’s way through the tiny bones—so tantalizing when one is hungry. The flavour is rather insipid, but if deft hands with a sharp knife have filleted these little fish, they can be given flavour and extra nutriment by dipping them in egg—beaten up on a plate with a flexible knife—then in wholemeal flour or fine breadcrumbs, before frying them gently in margarine.
TROUT
This small fish is so flavourful one might consider it well worth the bother of fussing with small bones. As it is a freshwater fish, it must be absolutely fresh and washed in salted water. The belly should be slit and cut along with scissors an
d the guts pulled out, but the head is left on for cooking. Turned over on a hot, buttered fireproof plate, it will be grilled in about ten minutes—five or more minutes either side. A squeeze of lemon juice over it seems to accentuate its particular flavour.
SKATE
This richly glutinous fish is so satisfying, and, because it is boneless, nothing need interrupt its transference from the plate to its predestined abode. Only the fin of skate is eaten (the body is so small) and what may be called the bones are flexible, thick, and non-spiky so that the flesh is easily separated from them. A cutlet of any dimension can be chosen to satisfy the birdlike or wolfish appetite.
Dipped in salted flour (or egg and breadcrumbs) it is best fried in dripping or margarine over moderate heat, with occasional turnings to let every side cook evenly and thoroughly. Since they are thinner, two cutlets are more quickly cooked than one large one. If they are about an inch and a half thick they should be cooked in about twenty minutes.
A plate will be made hot ready for use if put over the frying-pan, but should not be put over until the fish is well browned. This closure of the pan will, of course, create moisture, so the plate should be taken off quickly with the moisture clinging to it, and then drained.
RED MULLET
These are little and good, with the flavour of fresh lobster. The fins are cut off, when the fish are washed and beheaded, and they are cooked with the guts in. Grilled on a buttered plate—a few minutes either side, with a little salt and cayenne pepper added—they can be savoured as a delicacy, even if inadequate for a meal.
FRESH SALMON CUTLET
COLD. Steam the cutlet between plates over boiling water, BUT, if it is to be eaten cold, do not put butter on it as butter (or any solid fat) separates itself and hardens as it cools. A dessertspoonful or less of olive oil, which mingles and congeals with the fish, is best, with a few drops of lemon juice (or white vinegar) and some pepper and salt. Turn the cutlet(s) over in this and leave to marinate (soak) for a little while—even an hour or more. The steaming should not go on for more than ten minutes before testing. On no account should the salmon be overcooked.
Take the top plate off as soon as it is cooked so that condensed steam will not drip into the salmon as it cools. Skin it before it cools.
HOT. As salmon is an oily fish, that fact must be taken into account if one is on a diet. It may be steamed (poached) in lemon juice only, a little milk—or even water—just enough to moisten it. The fish will release its own juices once it begins to get hot.
FRIED. Fry it in the same way as the halibut was fried, and it should then be eaten hot.
HERRING
GRILLED. Equal with salmon for richness is the herring. The strength of its flavour, however, the subsequent deodorizing and washing up; the intricate pattern of bones; its capacity for multitudinous breeding (and consequent cheapness) have put the herring in a low class—almost one of the Untouchables—with the finicky. But the fastidious palate rejoices in its unashamed individuality and self-assertion.
CLEANING. It needs a little care in the cleaning. First the scales, which are firmly fixed to the skin when the herring is fresh, must be scraped off. If the fish is held on a flat board and its tail gripped, a knife held upright and stroked towards the head will bring the scales away. After a rinse under the cold tap, the head must then be tackled. It should be cut just through the bone, then held tightly, and with a quick twist it will come away, dragging with it most of the guts. A sharp knife or, better, the scissors must then be inserted in the belly to cut down towards the tail, taking care not to split the roes, which are pulled out and put on a separate plate until they are about to be cooked. The body must now be washed again under the cold tap, when the inedible remaining guts—the silver and the black—can be pushed out with the back of the thumb-nail.
After that (the grill may be getting hot meanwhile) the herring is put on the grilling-plate under the red-hot grill and in five or more minutes it should be softened on the one side. Five or more minutes on the reverse side, and the herring is ready to eat, with salt, pepper, and perhaps a little lemon juice.
FRIED. Herring can, of course, be fried also, in the same was as the halibut was fried. The traditional way in the North is to roll the herring in medium oatmeal; put it into a hot frying-pan with a nut of dripping, and cook it without a lid, turning it over occasionally, with loving care, at a moderate heat.
THE ROES. These are rolled in flour, and that makes it easy to pull away any slippery, stringy bits, which are discarded. The roes are then ready to be fried gently in any kind of dripping or fat. There will be the hard, eggy, female roes and the soft, paste-like, male ones. A high heat will make them spit, and overcooking will harden them abominably. Roes may be kept for a separate snack, on toast, or fried with tomatoes and sauté potatoes. Alternatively they may be baked (covered with butter paper until the last few minutes), or fried, with the body of the herring.
MACKEREL, GRILLED
Tradition has decreed that the mackerel (oily too, but less so than the herring) should be cut across the flesh as deeply as the bone, but not through it, in three or four places, before grilling. It is a harder fish than the herring, and one makes quite a filling meal with brown, buttered bread, and whatever fresh, raw, green things may be at hand, or celery.
LOBSTER WITH SALAD
He, our Grass Widower, found the cooking of vegetables too complicated, and he had not mastered the timing technique before his grass widowerhood drew to its close.
“Why bother?” he said, crunching a sweet, fresh, raw carrot. “It only spoils the flavour, and I still have my molars…. The Time Factor? … yes, but I crunch while I grill. Keeps me in strength and sharpens my appetite while the aroma of my fish or meat is pervading the house.”
But when he arrived home with a fresh lobster, cleverly cloven lengthwise, ready to be pulled from its soft shell and eaten, he sometimes preferred to set the pulled flesh aside on a plate while he prepared a simple salad.
RAW VEGETABLE SALAD
Usually it was just the heart of a lettuce (he could never be bothered to de-grit the outer, coarse leaves) pulled apart and turned over on a plate with a sprinkling of olive oil, lemon juice, white pepper and salt.
It might be the heart of a celery, simply dipped in salt.
Occasionally he grated a CARROT (finely), a TURNIP (coarsely), or shredded a piece of WHITE-HEART CABBAGE very finely, like cotton, and a small sliced ONION. He found that a firm, white-heart cabbage would serve for salad portions for a week. Only the dried outer surface of the cut portion had to be shaved off and discarded. The rest was juicy and firm until the very end. He even liked it, raw as it was, shredded with a TOMATO, to eat with his fillet steak or grilled chop.
CRAB
Patience deserted him entirely when he tried to deal with this crustacean. Eating privately, and for enjoyment, with no conversational obligations, he set about satisfying his hunger quite methodically. First he turned on the radio to the most cheerful programme he could find advertised; then he rolled up his sleeves; collected a large tray, the nut-crackers, a bone crochet hook, a fork, a cellar of salt, a heart of celery standing in a glass, some brown bread and butter and a vast table napkin.
Pulling away the grey matter (he called it the fronds) in a clump at the centre, and discarding it, he could eat freely of all that remained—the flaky flesh, the soft yellow, flavourful substance in the body—intermittently with the cracking of the claws and the hooking out of their pinky, succulent flesh.
CRAYFISH, PRAWNS AND SHRIMPS
These soft crustaceans require a less robust operation. No implement is needed to pull off the heads, the tails, the legs and the shells. It can be done with the fingers, but, though more tedious, may be done with a knife and fork. Shrimps take ages, and for that reason he sometimes bought them ready-peeled, knowing, but deliberately forgetting, that they had been peeled by someone else’s hands.
The CRAYFISH being of such a sweet and delicatel
y delicious flavour, he ate them as he bought them, freshly boiled in water.
But the PRAWNS and the SHRIMPS he liked occasionally to fry gently in a knob of butter. A few minutes only, adding a little salt and red pepper.
PARSLEY BUTTER
Once he fried some finely chopped parsley in the butter with the prawns, and enjoyed it so much. He tried the same idea with watercress and even preferred it.
He liked to eat crisp-bread, with a scrape of butter on it with these little fish. “Keeps my weight down”, he told himself as he bought the wax-paper-wrapped packet, and, as he said that, he realised that he hadn’t starved after all. In fact, he had done himself rather well.
WASHING UP
If there had been one serious deterrent, it had been the washing up. But on the second day of his temporary living and cooking alone, he had been given a tip—about the cold water wash up. He was so delighted to find how rapidly the sticky gluten of fish, bread and other things softened in cold water, that his distaste for washing up was replaced by interest.
Cooking Alone Page 4