How to Eat
Page 32
TABBOULEH
I love this salad of cracked wheat, mint, and parsley to be very green and very sharp, but if you want it to be grainier and oilier, then adapt it as you wish. In many recipes you will find cucumber stipulated as well; by all means add this if you want, but I tend not to as after a while it makes the salad go wet and watery. I keep leftovers in the fridge to be squished into pita or a baked potato for the next day’s lunch and, indeed, eaten whenever the desire overcomes me. Tomatoes seem to hold up pretty well in the dish, although I always add them just before serving the tabbouleh the first time. Perhaps it’s just that I don’t mind the pinkly-stained sogginess so much on my own account when it’s brought out for the second. Red onions, if they’re not mild, can make this very intensely oniony, so taste a bit of the onion (and the scallions—they too can vary) before you judge how much to add. Tabbouleh, surprisingly, works very well too with cold—poached or baked—salmon for a different take on a traditional summer food. Warm, pink, sweet lamb—noisettes seared on a griddle until medium-rare, let to stand for 5–10 minutes, then sliced thinly on the diagonal, heaped on a nearby plate, and sprinkled with some salt, chopped mint, and marjoram—is terrific with tabbouleh, too. Like a lot of foods with bite, once you eat this you hanker after it again.
Be very wary of using a food processor for chopping the parsley and mint for this, which must be done at the last minute to preserve their flavor. It does have a tendency not so much to chop herbs as to reduce them to a wet mush. But when you are chopping a reasonably large quantity the danger can be avoided more easily; just pulse on and off quickly and (after checking) repeatedly so that the herbs don’t get pulverized before you’ve had a chance to intervene. Leave the leaves relatively large, too; after all, the parsley and mint are the major part of the salad itself, not flavoring in it.
1 cup medium bulghur
juice of 2 lemons, plus more, if needed
2/3 cup olive oil, plus more, if needed
salt and freshly milled black pepper
½ cup parsley leaves
½ cup mint leaves
12 scallions (white and green parts), sliced into thin rings, or 1 large or 2 small red onions, minced
6 flavorful tomatoes
Put the bulghur in a bowl, cover it with boiling water, and leave to soak for 30 minutes. Drain the bulghur in a strainer, getting rid of as much water as possible.
Put the bulghur in a serving dish and pour over the lemon juice, olive oil, and a good sprinkling of salt and pepper. Meanwhile, finely chop the parsley and the mint.
Throw the chopped parsley and mint into the dressed bulghur and stir in the scallions. Put the tomatoes in a bowl and pour over boiling water from the kettle to cover. Leave them for a few minutes, then remove, peel, cut in half, and take out seeds. Dice the tomatoes and stir into the herbs and cracked wheat. Taste and add more salt, lemon juice, and oil if it needs it.
HUMMUS WITH SEARED LAMB AND TOASTED PINE NUTS
This isn’t an obvious pairing, but I think it’s an authentic one. That’s to say, although I’ve never seen mention of it in cookbooks, I’ve eaten it—in both Turkish and Lebanese restaurants. And I love this combination of cold, thickly nutty, buff-colored paste and hot, lemony-sweet shards of meat, and the waxy, resiny nuts—it instantly elevates the hummus from its familiar deli-counter incarnation. You could use good bought hummus—but just dribble a little good olive oil on top, and round the edges, before topping with the nuts and lamb.
And as far as authenticity goes, I don’t make any claims for my hummus recipe, for I add yogurt. Nor do I apologize for my innovation. Homemade hummus can be stodgy and sticky, and I love the tender whippedness that you get in restaurant versions (which, come to think of it, are probably brought in). If you leave out the yogurt, you may have to add a little more of the chickpea cooking liquid. Don’t be afraid of making this too liquid; it’ll most likely stiffen on keeping anyway. With the yogurt, I find I can still use up to 1 cup cooking liquid when puréeing the chickpeas.
I use noisettes of lamb for this because I know that they’ll be lean but still satiny within. Cut the noisettes into lardons, small fingerlike strips of meat, then cut these in half horizontally. That’s the size of meat you’re aiming for.
I also use garlic-infused oil to sear the lamb because I like it when the lamb has a garlicky taste, but I don’t want burnt shards of garlic mixed up with it. Marinating the lamb with a few cloves of crushed garlic can work, but then it doesn’t sear as well. But ordinary olive oil works well too, and because the hummus itself is garlicky, you hardly risk blandness by omitting the garlic with the lamb.
The quantities in this are based on the use of a shallow wide or long dish to hold it; if you’re using a deeper, smaller dish, cut back on the lamb and pine nuts.
1½ cups dried chickpeas
1 medium onion
2 bay leaves
7 garlic cloves, 3 unpeeled, 4 peeled and chopped roughly
1 teaspoon salt, plus more
3 tablespoons olive oil
9 tablespoons tahini
juice of 1½ lemons, plus more, if needed
fat pinch cumin
freshly milled black pepper
3 heaping tablespoons yogurt, preferably full fat, plus more, if needed
½ cup pine nuts
3 tablespoons garlic-infused olive oil (see page 459) or plain olive oil
¾ pound lean, tender lamb, cut in small thin strips (see headnote)
salt
2–3 tablespoons chopped parsley
warmed pita, for serving
For the hummus, soak and cook the chickpeas following the instructions on page 78, throwing the onion, bay leaves, and the 3 unpeeled garlic cloves into the pot, too. It is imperative that you taste the chickpeas to see if they are truly cooked enough before draining them; undercooked chickpeas make for an unsatisfactorily grainy texture, and you want a voluptuous velvetiness here, no hard surfaces. When you’re satisfied the chickpeas are buttery and tender, dunk a large measuring cup in to catch a good 1½ cups of the cooking liquid, and then you can drain the chickpeas with a clear conscience.
In the food processor add the chopped garlic, the salt, ½ cup of the cooking liquid, olive oil, tahini, the juice of 1 lemon, and cumin. Blitz till well and truly puréed. Taste, adding more liquid as you feel you need to loosen and soften the mixture. Process again, then grind in some pepper, add the yogurt, and give another whizz. Taste to see whether you want to add any more lemon juice (and you could want double) or yogurt, or indeed oil or seasoning. When you have a smooth yet dense purée with the intensity you like, scrape out into a bowl, cover, and keep in the fridge until about an hour before you want to eat it.
You can toast the pine nuts before then, but the lamb must be done at the last minute. To be frank, then, you may as well do them both together. Decant the hummus into a shallow round or oval bowl and put to one side for a moment.
Put a heavy-bottomed frying pan on the stove over medium heat, add the pine nuts, and shake every so often until they begin to take on a deep golden color and their resiny fragrance rises from the pan. Pour onto a plate or into a bowl and then add the garlic-infused oil to the pan.
When the oil is hot, toss in the lamb and stir furiously until it begins to crisp and brown at the edges. Add the juice of the half lemon, push the meat about once more, and empty the contents of the pan evenly over the hummus, lemony oil juices and all.
Sprinkle with salt, season with pepper, and scatter with the toasted pine nuts. Add the parsley, then serve immediately and with the pita.
TARAMASALATA
I wouldn’t eat taramasalata with the lamb-heavy version of hummus here, but it’s a bit like giving a present to one child: you just can’t give the one recipe and leave out the other. So I add the taramasalata here. But maybe not just for that reason—in order to complete, too, the childhood picture I have of my mother stuffing bread, ritually uncased cod’s roe, oil, lemon, briskly into her b
lender—and a really vile one at that, with an olive-green plastic top and a goblet made of dull bronze plastic, like a fourth-rate gangster’s shades.
To make taramasalata, put about ½ cup smoked cod roe (or mullet roe, if you can find it) into a food processor. Add 2 slices of firm white bread, left to get slightly dry, then soaked in water and squeezed out, 2 garlic cloves, and the juice of 1 lemon. Purée to a thick, smooth paste. Then process again, while pouring about 10 tablespoons olive oil down the feed tube. Remove the lid and taste; you may need some more lemon juice and oil. I sometimes add a dollop of yogurt, as with the hummus. When it’s as you like it, remove to a shallow bowl and dot with a few halved, stoned black olives, should the mood take you.
If I’m eating this with pita, I like some scallions to accompany it, too; but I have a rather deep and inexplicable love for this just spread on hot toast made from plastic white bread.
GARLIC CHICKEN WINGS
There are countless ways you could let garlic breathe its sweet, smoky breath over these bony joints; this method requires very little effort (though a little early planning) for great effect. It avoids absolutely the burning and bitterness you can get with chopped raw garlic and adds the velvet mellowness of baked garlic without the extra hour’s cooking that would take. I make and eat these compulsively. I should add that children adore this, so if you’ve got a lot of them coming for lunch, do boost quantities.
cloves from 2 heads garlic, unpeeled
1 2/3 cups olive oil
juice of 2 lemons
16 chicken wings
coarse salt
Put the garlic in cold water to cover generously, bring to boil, and boil for 10 minutes. Then drain, push the cloves out of their skins into the processor, and blitz. Then, with the motor running, pour the oil down the feed tube till you have a milky white gloop. Add the lemon juice, pour over the chicken wings, and leave covered in fridge, fleshy side down, for 36 hours.
Take them out of the fridge a good hour before you put them in the oven and empty out into roasting pan. Preheat the oven to 425°F. Then bake, basting occasionally, for 45 minutes to an hour, until they are very well done, crisp and burnished brown. Remove from the oven, arrange on a large plate, and sprinkle generously with the salt.
EGGPLANT SLICES WITH POMEGRANATE JUICE AND MINT
I suppose pomegranates—that carpaccio-red juice, those glassy beads—always seem exotic to us, and that’s partly why I like them. There is something both biblical and almost belle époque about them, something both ancient and vulgar. And curiously, I feel rather nostalgically inclined toward them, too. I remember digging them out of Christmas stockings, then sitting for hours with a yellow-mazed half in front of me, winkling the bitter-cased seeds out with a pin.
But they fit best in the time-stamped, opulent Middle Eastern tradition, as here, with the juice steeping pinkly a plate of eggplant slices fried in olive oil, the seeds like jewels glinting out from behind the aromatic leafiness of thickly sprinkled mint. You can fry the eggplant in advance, but don’t do anything with the pomegranate and mint until about half an hour before you eat. After 20 minutes’ steeping, the eggplant is at its heady best.
I don’t, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, salt and soak eggplant before preparing it; if you buy ones that are taut and glossy and feel light for their size, you shouldn’t find them bitter. If you like, you can substitute charred, skinned red peppers for the eggplant, and pomegranate molasses (see page 459) for the fresh pomegranates. If using the molasses, make a dressing for the eggplant with 2 tablespoons each of the molasses, extra-virgin olive oil, and water. Drizzle this over the eggplant before sprinkling with salt and the mint.
On the table with this I’d put a plate of cucumbers, cut into 2-inch lengths and then each chunk cut into quarters lengthways. Add a plate of tomatoes and another of raw, scrubbed, and peeled carrots, in chunks like the cucumber, and consider decanting a jar of pickled peppers.
2 medium eggplants
olive oil, for frying
2 pomegranates
handful fresh mint
salt
Slice the eggplant into discs about ¼-inch thick or cut lengthways to form swelling, pear-shaped slices; the bulging lengths look more beautiful, the discs are easier to eat.
Once sliced, start frying. If you’ve got a ridged cast-iron griddle, use that, only brush the eggplant as well as the griddle with olive oil before you start. Or use a frying pan, pouring in the oil to a depth of about ¼ inch (and be prepared to add more as you put fresh eggplant batches in to fry) and leaving the slices as they are. Whichever way, cook the eggplant briskly until the surface crisps and the interior is soft, then remove to plates lined thickly with paper towels and drape some more paper over the resting slices so that the paper absorbs as much oil as possible and the eggplant is as dry as possible. You can eat them warm or, if it makes life easier, just leave them to get cold.
Meanwhile, cut one of the pomegranates in half and remove the seeds; you’ll need just enough to sprinkle over the slices. The easiest way to do this is to hold a half with one hand, cut side down, over a bowl; with the other hand take a wooden spoon and thwack the held half. After the third thwack you will have rubies raining down. Put those aside and squeeze the juice out of the second fruit. I find an electric citrus juicer the easiest way to do this, but an ordinary, old-fashioned manual one will do. (You might, though, need to get more of the fruit if juicing by hand.) Finely chop the mint. Arrange the eggplant slices on a large plate, sprinkle over a little salt, then pour on the pomegranate juice. Now sprinkle over the mint and then scatter over the pomegranate seeds, but go steady; you may find that you don’t need them all. This is one of those times when less is probably more.
A COMFORTING LUNCH FOR 4
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FISH AND PORCINI PIE
ICE CREAM, CHERRIES, FLAKED ALMONDS, AND CHOCOLATE SAUCE
Fish pie is not particularly labor-intensive to cook, but it’s hard to get right; if the flour/butter/milk balance is off, the sauce bubbling beneath the blanket of nutmeggy mashed potato can be too runny or too solid. Don’t let nervousness make you scrimp on the milk; it’s better runny than stodgy, and even an imperfect fish pie is a delicious one. What’s important is not to make the sauce taste too floury (using Italian 00 flour sees to that) and not to let your desire for something comforting blunt your appetite for seasoning. I added porcini because I’d been given some by my Austrian aunt Frieda, who was coming for lunch. Perhaps it would be more correct to say great-aunt; the title is honorific but she’s the generation, was the companion, of my grandmother. She was the matron at my mother and aunts’ boarding school and my grandmother, not I think extraordinarily maternal, was so dreading the summer holidays that she asked Matron to stay at home with the children during them. Over forty years later, she’s still here, an important figure in all our lives. I wanted to use the mushrooms because she’d given them to me. But I also thought they’d add a creaturely muskiness, a depth of tone, to the milkily-sweet fish-scented sauce. They did.
This is how I made it. You can change the fish selection as you want and boil and mash the potatoes ahead of time.
FISH AND PORCINI PIE
2 tablespoons dried porcini
½-pound piece of cod
½-pound piece of smoked haddock (finnan haddie)
½-pound piece of salmon
1 cup milk
1¼ cups fish stock
3 bay leaves
4 tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter, plus more, for dotting the pie
½ cup Italian 00 or all-purpose flour
2½ pounds floury potatoes
½ cup heavy cream
freshly grated nutmeg
salt and freshly milled black pepper
Cover the dried porcini with very hot water and leave for 20 minutes or so. Then drain the mushrooms and strain the soaking liquid into the stock. Make sure the mushrooms are grit-free; rinse them, if necessary, and chop them finely.
Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the mushrooms. Fry gently for 2 minutes, stir in the flour, and fry gently for another 2 minutes. Off the heat, very slowly add the liquid from the cup, stirring with a wooden spoon or beating with a whisk (whichever suits) as you go. When all is incorporated, put back on the heat. Add the bay leaves and stir gently until thickened. If you’re going to eat it straightaway, pour over the fish in the casserole. Otherwise, remove from heat and cover with waxed paper or a film of melted butter.
Boil and mash the potatoes with the cream and season with the nutmeg and lots of salt and pepper. When you’re ready to roll, preheat the oven to 350°F. Put the fish and mushroomy white sauce in the casserole, if you haven’t already done so, the potato on top, with more nutmeg, pepper and butter (little dots of it here and there) added just before it goes into the oven. Depending on how hot it all is before it goes in the oven, the fish pie should need 20–40 minutes, or until lightly golden in parts on top. Test as you go. This isn’t an untouchable work of art you’re creating; dig a hole, taste, and then patch up with potato.
ICE CREAM
For dessert, buy the best ice cream, vanilla if you can, or make your own (see page 33). Buy a ruby-glinting jar of bottled, sourish cherries and some flaked or slivered almonds to go with it and make a glossily dark chocolate sauce (page 222).