Don’t worry about having leftovers. What could be nicer the next day than cold duck, thinly sliced, stirred into warm rice, doused with soy sauce, and studded with just-hot sugar snaps? Or just eat it as it is, with a fat clump of Japanese pickled ginger and waxy, warm new potatoes.
DESSERTS
The first thing the quick cook can dispense with is cooking the last course. No French person would consider apologizing for buying something from a good pâtisserie, and neither should you.
ICE CREAM
AFFOGGATO
STEM GINGER
CHOCOLATE
Otherwise, think along the lines of good, bought ice cream eaten with good, bought cookies or splodged with easily-thrown-together sauces. Warm some honey, pour it over, then sprinkle with toasted flaked almonds, or substitute maple syrup and pecans or walnuts. Throw over a cup of espresso to make what the Italians call an affoggato (or use rum). Spoon over stem ginger in its oozing, golden, throat-catchingly hot and sweet syrup. Or, as in one of the suggested menus below, just grind some good dark chocolate to powdery grains in the food processor and sprinkle over the ice cream.
FROZEN BERRIES
CREAM
MERINGUE
And, as mentioned in Basics, Etc., in regard to the freezer and how it may usefully be stocked, keep a ready supply of frozen berries—raspberries, blackberries, mixed. Use as they are—removing all strawberries from the mixed bag—only add sugar. You can also add some glugs of liqueur, some finely grated orange zest, a few mint leaves, or some orange-flower water. Serve with crème fraîche or ice cream, as you like. Just before serving, sprinkle with confectioners’ sugar or ground pistachios. You can make a creamy, red-splodged mess by whipping up some heavy cream, crumbling some store-bought meringues, and stirring in a package of thawed, sweetened berries. I think this is much better than using the meringues whole and going in for nest-like effects.
It is worth always bearing in mind the confectioners’-sugar-and-strainer trick. Somehow, giving any bought or hastily-thrown-together dessert a smart dusting of the sugar makes it automatically look like the loving product of hours-long labor in the kitchen. I don’t suggest you ever pretend something bought is homemade. Nor do I advise forays into cheffy fiddling in general—I am not a garnish girl—but this small degree of finish pleases me.
A BRIEF NOTE ON EQUIPMENT
The microwave is the usually cited without-which tool for the time-pressed kitchen survivor. But consider, rather, the pressure cooker. Newfangled models don’t explode, don’t hiss or honk or emit clouds of threatening steam, and they cut cooking time, on average, by a third. And—by way of even more dramatic example—you can cook dried, unsoaked chickpeas in them in 35 minutes. Another very useful piece of gadgetry, if you’re going to be having people round for supper often when you haven’t really got the time to cook for them, is an electric rice cooker. You’d be surprised how much food can be eaten with rice; and the whole after-work kitchen flurry is much reduced when you’re not dealing with potatoes, too.
QUICK AFTER-WORK SUPPERS FOR FOUR
* * *
Individual recipes that take under 30 minutes to cook are dotted throughout the book (and are listed as such in the Index; after all, in the normal course of cooking we all mix food that can be rustled together quickly with that which takes longer or needs more care or attention. But there are times when anything that can’t be done fast and without fussing is out of the culinary question. If you don’t get back from work till seven and have got people coming over at eight, you need to get moving. And bearing in mind that planning—the sheer effort of exhausted thought required—can sometimes feel just as burdensome as the preparation, I’ve drawn up a list of quick and easy two-course after-work suppers.
Nothing here takes more than half an hour to cook; most dishes don’t even take 10 minutes. And all recipes feed four.
RED MULLET WITH GARLIC AND ROSEMARY
GOOEY CHOCOLATE PUDDINGS
This menu exemplifies my ideas for fast food: the fish itself takes a bare few minutes; the puddings you mix together when you get in and then just leave until the moment, more or less, you want to eat. You can thus appear the very model of serenity in the kitchen, however late or in whatever stressed state you actually got back.
The red mullet—sometimes referred to by its French name, rouget—is fragrant, light, beautiful. (You can substitute baby trout fillets if you can’t get red mullet.) The chocolate puddings, which are really Patricia Wells’ recipe for chocolate gourmandise in At Home in Provence, provide a harmoniously voluptuous counterpoint: chewy and cracked like macaroons on top and on the base, with a thick, glossy goo of chocolate sauce in the middle.
RED MULLET WITH GARLIC AND ROSEMARY
Ask the fish seller to leave the pearly-pink, crimson-beaded skin on the fish but to remove the scales. For mincing the garlic, rosemary, and orange zest, I pile everything onto the chopping board and use my mezzaluna.
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon fresh rosemary leaves, minced
zest of 2 oranges, minced
6 tablespoons olive oil
10 red mullet fillets with skin (about
3 ounces each)
¾ cup vermouth or white wine
Combine the garlic, rosemary, and orange zest and put half of this mixture into a large frying pan with 3 tablespoons of the oil. Heat, bring up to sizzling point, then add half the fish fillets, skin side down. Give them a couple of minutes a side or until you can see that the flesh has lost its raw transparency. Remove the fish fillets to a warmed plate big enough to take everything later and repeat the whole process with the remaining garlic mixture and fillets. Add these fillets to the warmed plate. Deglaze the pan with vermouth, let it bubble up, and, when syrupy, pour this, scraping up the chopped bits as you do so, over the fish. If you want a noodle accompaniment—and they do go well with it—then look at the noodle and snow pea stir-fry on page 178, eliminating, I’d think, the mushrooms. The mullet is wonderful without noodles, too, just with some grilled tomatoes and good bread.
GOOEY CHOCOLATE PUDDINGS
4½ ounces best-quality bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted
butter
3 large eggs
¾ cup sugar
¼ cup Italian 00 or all-purpose flour
Before you’ve even taken your coat off, put the chocolate and butter in the top of a double boiler above simmering water. Whisk every now and again until melted. In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar, and flour until just blended. Gradually whisk in the melted chocolate mixture. Set aside.
Grease 4 1-cup ramekins with butter and add flour to cover the butter, tapping the ramekins to get rid of excess. Preheat the oven to 400°F about half an hour before you want to eat the puddings. And I’d leave cooking them until you’ve finished the main course. It doesn’t matter if there’s no food on the table for 10 minutes; and these do have to be done at the last minute.
So, pour the mixture into the ramekins and put them on a baking sheet in the oven for 10–12 minutes, until the tops are firm and cracking slightly and the edges set. Serve immediately and consider providing a pitcher of cold, cold cream for people to pour into their pudding’s hotly deliquescing interior as they eat.
BEEF STROGANOFF
ROAST SUGAR-SPRINKLED PEACHES
Although beef stroganoff has to be cooked at the very last minute—which can often be the quickest route to a nervous breakdown in the kitchen—you can fry the onions and butter as soon as you get in. Then all you need to do once you’re on the verge of sitting down is reheat them gently for a couple of minutes in a little butter, remove them again from the pan and then proceed with the meat. From that stage you’re not more than about 3 minutes away from being able to eat, so this is worth bearing in mind for friends you just know are going to be late.
BEEF STROGANOFF
Most butchers can get you tail bits of fillet, which wi
ll cost less and which you won’t mind so much tearing into raggedy scraps. Cook a buttery mound of basmati rice to eat with it.
6 tablespoons (¾ stick) unsalted
butter
a few drops oil
1 large onion, minced
½ pound button mushrooms, sliced
whole nutmeg
salt and freshly milled black pepper
2 pounds beef fillet, cut into
thin strips
scant ½ teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 cup crème fraîche
a few pinches ground paprika
Put 2 tablespoons of the butter in a frying pan with a drop of the oil. Put on the heat, add the onion, and sauté gently, stirring frequently, until soft and beginning to color. Add 2 tablespoons more of the butter and, when melted, toss in the mushrooms and cook for another 4–5 minutes. Grate some nutmeg over the onions and mushrooms in the pan and season with the salt and pepper. Stir well and remove to a plate. Add the remaining butter to the pan with a drop or two more of the oil and turn the heat to high. When the butter’s hot, stir-fry the fillet for a couple of minutes, until it’s seared on the outside but still pinkly tender within. Return the onions and mushrooms to the pan; stir well. Grate over some more nutmeg and stir in the Dijon mustard, then the crème fraîche. Sprinkle in a pinch of paprika, add more salt, if needed, then pour onto a warmed plate. If you want, you can put the rice on the same plate, in a circle with the beef stroganoff in the middle (which is very much in keeping with the period in which this dish found most fashionable favor) or pile onto separate plates. Either way, dust a little more paprika over it once it’s served up.
ROAST SUGAR-SPRINKLED PEACHES
This is scarcely a recipe: get 5–6 peaches (enough for 2 halves each and then a little more), split them in half, remove the stones, and put them, cut-side up, in a buttered ovenproof dish in which they fit snugly. Into each cavity add a dot of butter and a tablespoon of sugar—vanilla, brown, or ordinary white, as you like—then another few dots of butter, and roast in a preheated 400°F oven for about 20 minutes. Think about providing some good bought ice cream to go with. And you can substitute apricots or, of course, nectarines.
SQUID WITH CHILI AND CLAMS
RICOTTA WITH HONEY AND TOASTED PINE NUTS
This is the sort of dinner I cook when I’ve got girlfriends coming over, chapter meetings of the martyred sisterhood. Even though quantities are enough for four, for some reason there are always only three of us, and I don’t reduce amounts of ingredients correspondingly.
I’m not saying that this menu is necessarily unsuitable for mixed company, but my experience teaches me that this is more naturally girlfood. Your experience may be fortunate enough to make you feel otherwise.
SQUID WITH CHILI AND CLAMS
I tend to get my fish from the fish seller and get him to clean the squid, but you can sometimes buy it ready-cleaned at the supermarket. If you don’t have any sake at hand, then use dry sherry.
32 cherrystone clams, well scrubbed and rinsed
5 tablespoons olive oil
4 garlic cloves, squished with flat of knife
1 dried red chili pepper
4 large squid (about ½ pound each), cleaned and the bodies cut into rings
1 cup sake or dry sherry
2–3 tablespoons chopped parsley or Thai basil
Rinse and scrub the clams under cold running water, throwing out any that are cracked, damaged, or stay open. Put the oil in a wide saucepan (which has a lid, though you don’t need it yet) on a high heat. When hot, add the garlic and crumble in the dried, whole chili pepper. Stir well, then add the squid and fry, stirring, for about a minute, until the glassy flesh turns a denser white. Add the clams, the sake, and 1 cup water, and then clamp on the lid and turn the heat down a little. Cook for 4–5 minutes, shaking the pan a bit every now and again, or until the clams are all steamed open, then pour into a large bowl and cover with the parsley or Thai basil.
It’s idiosyncratic, perhaps, but I find a bowl of plain basmati rice the perfect accompaniment. You might think of adding a couple of cardamom pods to infuse the rice while cooking, but no butter or oil at the end—that’s the point.
This doesn’t really count as a recipe; it’s more a suggestion.
RICOTTA WITH HONEY AND TOASTED PINE NUTS
Mound about 12 ounces of fresh ricotta in a pretty bowl (fresh, unsalty goat’s cheese, sliced and arranged on a plate, works just as well). Dribble a couple of tablespoons of good, clear honey over and then sprinkle on about 1⁄3 cup pine nuts, which you’ve first toasted till golden and waxily fragrant in a hot, oil-less pan.
SOLE WITH CHANTERELLES
MASCARPONE, RUM, AND LIME CREAM
What I generally do here is complete the first part of the mascarpone cream when I get in (that’s to say, everything up to the egg whites) and then whisk and fold in the egg whites just before I get started on the fish. It all depends on how early you get in from work; if it’s a bare half hour before you’re expecting everyone else, just make up the dessert, egg whites and all, in its entirety.
SOLE WITH CHANTERELLES
I love the ecstatic saffron intensity of the chanterelles against the fine whiteness of the sole, but don’t feel obliged to use them. I often substitute those surreally tinted pieds bleues mushrooms, available sometimes in gourmet markets, and oyster mushrooms should be just as good. If you can’t get your hands on garlic-infused oil to make this, add 1 teaspoon of chopped garlic to the butter with 1 tablespoon of olive oil; allow the butter mixture to heat and the garlic to soften but not color, then put in the mushrooms. Proceed as the recipe directs.
1 1/3 pounds chanterelles
9 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 stick plus 1 tablespoon), plus more, if needed
1 tablespoon garlic-infused oil (see page 459 and headnote)
salt and freshly milled black pepper
8 sole fillets (about 6 ounces each)
juice of ¼–½ lemon
½ cup vermouth or white wine
2–3 tablespoons chopped parsley
Cook the mushrooms, wiped with a paper towel first if they need it, in 8 tablespoons of the butter and garlic oil in a large, high-sided if possible, frying pan, adding salt and pepper to taste, then remove to a plate or bowl while you get on with the fish. You shouldn’t have to add any more butter, but do, if you feel you need to. Add the sole in a couple or so batches and cook 2 minutes on the first side, then another on the second, or until just cooked through. This should be all the cooking they need, but poke a knife in to check. Remove them as you go to a large, warmed plate big enough to hold all 8 fillets, sprinkle with salt, then get on with the rest. When all the fish is on the plate, put the mushrooms back in the pan and heat them up, adding the lemon juice to taste and the vermouth. Let the mushrooms bubble up and stir in the remaining tablespoon of butter. Pour over the sole and sprinkle with the parsley.
I don’t think you need to serve anything more than a bowl of green vegetables with this—given that the dessert is not a lean one—and I’d probably choose some frozen young peas with a couple of handfuls of sugar snaps thrown in for the last 60 seconds or so of cooking time.
MASCARPONE, RUM, AND LIME CREAM
3 eggs, separated
6 tablespoons superfine sugar
3 1/3 cups mascarpone
3 tablespoons dark rum
juice of 1 lime plus more, if needed
Whisk the egg yolks and sugar together till light and moussily creamy. In another bowl, stir the mascarpone together with the rum and lime juice. Stir the egg mixture in gently but firmly, with a folding movement, and taste; you may want to add a little more lime juice. Don’t worry about sharpness unduly; you need that to hold the egg-enriched mascarpone in check. What you want to end up with is the creamy tartness, the taste of cheesecake, but with the whipped lightness of mousse.
Wipe the inside of the bowl you’re going to whisk the egg whites in with the cut side of the lime. T
hen whisk the whites till stiff and fold them into the mascarpone mixture. Decant into glasses and keep somewhere cool till needed. I leave this blank and unadorned, but you could always pare a strip of lime zest, or even cut a twist of lime, holiday-cocktail style, for the top of each glass. But plain or prinked, you must get hold of some cookies to eat with.
LAMB WITH GARLICKY TAHINI
PASSION FRUIT FOOL
Again, you can more or less prepare the dessert when you get in—just leave the combining of the seed-studded pulp and sweetened cream till last minute—and you can put the lamb in its scant marinade and get on with the tahini garlic sauce at the same time. That leaves you with the lamb to cook—15 minutes at most.
LAMB WITH GARLICKY TAHINI
with thanks to Steve Afif
I figure on allowing each person a couple of lamb noisettes, meat nuggets taken from the boned lamb loin, and further provide enough for half those present to have another one each.
1 onion, chopped roughly
1¼ cups extra-virgin olive oil
zest of 1 lemon and juice of 2
¼ teaspoon ground cumin, plus more,
for garnishing
10 lamb noisettes, about 1¼ inches thick
8 tablespoons tahini
4 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
½ teaspoon coarse salt
Put the onion into one large shallow dish in which the noisettes will fit in one layer, or divide the onion into two medium-to-large freezer bags. Add the oil, lemon zest, and cumin (dividing equally, obviously, if you’re using bags). Give a good stir and then add the lamb. Cover the dish or tie up the bags and leave, turning or squishing respectively at half time, as long as you’ve got; frankly, though, it should be for at least 10 minutes and preferably not in the fridge. Preheat the oven to 425°F. Put a nonstick or cast-iron pan on the stove. Remove the noisettes from the marinade; you don’t need to wipe them dry, just brush off the bits of onion. Sear each side for a minute or two, then transfer to a baking pan and then to the preheated oven. Ten minutes should be right for pink, but not bloody, lamb; you may need a bit longer if the meat started off very cold. You will need to check for yourself, obviously, and when cooked as you want, remove to warmed plate.
How to Eat Page 23