How to Eat
Page 34
I’m sorry to sound bossy, but Sunday lunch, as I’ve said, has to be run like a military campaign. I find it easier to decide when I want to eat and then work backwards, writing every move down on a pad that I keep in a fixed place in the kitchen. This timetable is engineered toward having lunch ready to eat at 2 P.M. exactly. I take it for granted that dessert’s been made already.
All quantities and timings have in mind a lunch for about 6 adults and perhaps some children and are based on having a 5-pound roast of any of the kinds mentioned above to cook.
TIMETABLE
11:20 Start gravy
11:30 Take beef out of fridge
11:50 Peel potatoes
12:05 Put the potatoes in their water in the pan, bring to the boil, and parboil. Preheat oven to 425°F.
12:15 Put roasting pan in oven with a knob of dripping or vegetable oil for beef
12:20 Put beef in oven
12:35 Prepare any vegetables that need chopping or cleaning, etc.
12:40 Put pan with dripping for potatoes in oven
12:50 Make Yorkshire pudding
1:00 Put potatoes in oven
1:25 Put vegetable water on to heat
1:35 Put pan with drippings for Yorkshire pudding in oven
1:40 Take out beef and put in Yorkshire pudding, turning oven up to 450°F as you do so. Let beef stand.
1:45 Cook vegetables
2:00 Take out Yorkshire pudding and potatoes
THE ROAST BEEF
I think many people underplay how much meat you need. For 6 people, I wouldn’t consider getting under 5 pounds—which, in other words, is about a pound per person. A roast is a sad prospect without the possibility of leftovers. For a rib you should add on about 2 pounds extra here.
For rare meat you can either cook the beef at 475°F for 15 minutes and then turn it down to 350°F and cook for about 15 minutes per pound, or cook at 425°F throughout for about 15 minutes per pound, which approach is what the timetable reflects. I usually do 15 minutes per pound and then add on an extra 5 minutes so that those who don’t like rare meat have a bit of slightly more cooked beef from the ends. Those who don’t like blood don’t have to get it; the rest of us gratifyingly do. Use a meat thermometer to determine doneness exactly. The internal temperature for rare beef is 120°F; for medium-rare, 125°–130°F; and for medium, 140°F.
All I do to the beef is massage it with dry mustard powder after I’ve taken it out of the fridge. I use a knob of dripping for the pan, but you could use whatever fat or oil you have at hand.
THE GRAVY
Gravy is one of my weaknesses, which is to say I find it hard to make a convincing light and thin juice. To overcome my deficiencies, I took to following Jane Grigson’s recipe for onion gravy (indeed, most of my Sunday is Grigson-based), adding a drop of Marsala to it. You don’t need to—you could use some Madeira or even some sweet sherry or just add a little bit more sugar—but the Marsala brings a wonderful aromatic muskiness to the gravy. If you don’t have any real beef stock, use bouillon cubes or the best beef stock you can buy. If you use a cube, dilute it well and taste before putting in salt.
You can start the gravy the day before if you want, just reheating and adding meat juices at the last minute.
1 tablespoon dripping or butter, plus a dribble of oil
1 medium onion, sliced very thinly
pinch brown sugar
2 tablespoons Marsala
1 teaspoon all-purpose flour
1¼ cup beef stock
Heat the dripping or melt the butter (with the oil to stop its burning) in a saucepan and cook the onion in it at a very low temperature, stirring often. When the onion is soft, add the sugar and Marsala and let it caramelize. Cover with foil, putting the foil as near to the bottom of the pan as possible, and continue to cook, still on a very low flame, for about 10 minutes. Then stir in the flour and cook, stirring, for about 2 minutes. Stir in the stock, bring to the boil (you can turn the heat up here), then reduce the heat to very low again and simmer gently for about 20 minutes. Purée in the food processor (or you can strain it, pushing the soft onion through the strainer). Pour back into the saucepan. At the last minute, reheat and add meat juices from roasting pan. This gravy is wonderfully stress-free, as you don’t have to be doing furious deglazing at the last minute.
THE ROAST POTATOES
I like roast potatoes fairly small, so I cut a medium-to-large one into about three pieces. For 6 people, I suppose, that’s about 4 pounds. Well, that may be overgenerous, but nothing is worse than too few.
Peel the potatoes and cut them into large chunks. Put them in cold salted water, bring to the boil, and parboil for 4–5 minutes. Drain, put back in the saucepan, put on the lid, and bang the whole thing about a bit so that the edges of the potatoes get blurred; the rough edges help them catch in the fat and so get crisp. Add 1 tablespoon or so of semolina and give the pan, with its lid on, another good shake. The semolina gives the potatoes a divinely sweet edge—not at all cloying or inappropriate, just an intensified caughtness, as it were. When my mother and aunts were young, they had an Italian au pair, Antonia, who, when required to make a British Sunday lunch (having never cooked anything other than Italian food), adopted, or rather invented, this practice. If you’re unconvinced, or don’t have any semolina at hand, just use flour and shake the warm potatoes around in it. The flour doesn’t give the same honey-toned depth as semolina, but it helps the potatoes catch and brown wonderfully.
Put 5–6 tablespoons fat or oil in a roasting pan that will hold the potatoes comfortably and transfer it to the oven to heat. I use tablespoon-sized lumps of goose fat or some truly superb beef dripping. If you can lay your hands on neither, of course you can use oil or even vegetable fat. The fat must be hot before the potatoes go in the pan, and they must not be taken out of the oven until you are absolutely ready to eat them. They will take approximately 1 hour to cook.
THE YORKSHIRE PUDDING
I always use Jane Grigson’s English Food for the Chinese Yorkshire pudding recipe, which is not as odd as it sounds. The story is that when a big competition was held in Leeds for the best Yorkshire pudding, the winner was a Chinese cook called Tin Sung Yang. For years it was held to have a mystery ingredient—tai luk sauce—until, Jane Grigson reports, a niece of hers found that this was a Chinese joke. Nevertheless, the recipe is different from normal—it works backwards. That’s to say, you mix the eggs and milk and then stir in the flour, rather than making a well in the flour and adding the eggs and milk, and it works triumphantly; it billows up into a gloriously copper crown of a cushion. I am able to cook this for the most die-hard, pudding-proud British northerners without inhibition or anxiety. I prefer Yorkshire pudding to be in one dish rather than in those depressing, cafeteria-style individual portions, so for this amount, I use an enamel dish about 12 by 7½ inches and 3 inches deep. Cook it on the top rack of the oven but make sure the rack isn’t too high up, as the Yorkshire pudding really does rise. I have had to prise it off the ceiling of the oven, which slightly dented its magnificence and my glory.
1¼ cups milk
4 eggs
scant ½ teaspoon salt
freshly milled black pepper
1½ cups all-purpose flour, sifted
1 tablespoon beef dripping or vegetable oil to taste
The oven should be heated to 450°F. Mix the milk, eggs, and salt, and add pepper, beating all well together. I use my freestanding mixer, the fabulous KitchenAid, but anything—hand-held electric mixer, rotary, or balloon whisk—would do. Let these ingredients stand for 15 minutes and then whisk in the flour. Meanwhile, add the dripping to the pan and put it in the oven to heat for about 10 minutes. Into this intensely hot pan you should pour the batter and cook for 20 minutes, or until well puffed and golden. Bring it, triumphant, to the table.
THE DESSERT
The recipe for Barbados cream is on page 117. Recipes for crumbles are on pages 41 and 156; custard to go with is on page 32.
LEMON ICE CREAM
Years ago, when I bought my enormously expensive ice-cream maker, a friend of mine brought round her copy of Shona Crawford Poole’s Iced Delights for me to play with. Naturally, the recipe I fell upon was one that didn’t need an ice-cream maker. I include it here out of fondness—my sister Thomasina loved it and often made it herself.
It’s very quick and easy to make. Even though I have doubts about non-custard-based ices (they freeze very hard and then melt back into a runny creaminess, so you have to be very careful about ripening them in the fridge for a good 40 minutes before eating them, rather than letting them thaw in the kitchen and thus start dripping), it’s worth having this one under your belt, as it is good by itself and wonderful as an accompaniment to a tarte au citron (bought or made, but especially useful to zhuzz up a bought one), rhubarb pie, a plate of stewed rhubarb, wine-candied quinces (page 329), or any assortment of berries.
juice of 3 lemons, the zest of 2
1½ cups confectioners’ sugar
1¾ cups heavy cream
Pour the lemon juice into a bowl with the zest and sugar, stir to combine, and leave for 30 minutes, if you can, to let the flavor deepen.
Whip the cream with 3 tablespoons iced water until it holds soft peaks, then whisk in the sweetened lemon juice. Turn into a shallow container, cover, and freeze—no stirring, crystal-breaking-up, mixing, or anything needed—until firm, about 2 hours. Bear in mind my comments about thawing and melting, above, when you want to eat it.
LEMON MERINGUE ICE CREAM
This is an ice cream along much the same lines. I saw this recipe of Jane and Elizabeth Pelly’s in The Women Chefs of Great Britain, though I’ve changed it slightly here. The original version specified homemade meringues and homemade lemon curd, but I brazened it out with the bought stuff and suggest, for ease, that you do too. If you are using shop meringues and curd, you may have to add more lemon juice and zest or it will be too sweet. Taste to see; it needs an edge to it.
1¾ cups heavy cream
1 cup full-fat yogurt
1¼ cups lemon curd
juice and zest of 2 lemons
6 meringue nests (see headnote)
Whip the cream until fairly stiff and fold in the yogurt. Add the lemon curd, lemon juice and zest (you will find it easier to stir in the curd if you add the lemon juice to it first), and the meringues, broken up into small pieces, but not so small that they’ll dissolve into dust.
Put into a container—it should really be a shallow rather than tall one—and freeze. And that’s all there is to it. Ripen it in the fridge for 40 minutes before you want to eat it. You could dribble over it either some clear honey or some more lemon curd diluted to runniness with lemon juice.
A SUMMER LEMON MERINGUE PIE
Apropos of this, one year I made a summer version of lemon meringue pie, or maybe it would be better to describe it as a cross between lemon meringue pie and pavlova: make a pavlova base—see page 336—smear it with some thickly whipped double cream, as if one were spreading some butter on bread, then thickly cover that with lemon curd, then even more thickly with more whipped double cream, and then dot with some raspberries.
LATE-SUMMER SUNDAY ROAST BEEF AND YORKSHIRE PUDDING FOR 8
* * *
COLD ROAST FILLET OF BEEF
ROSEMARY AND ANCHOVY MAYONNAISE
WARM CANNELLINI OR CRANBERRY BEANS WITH GARLIC AND SAGE
TOMATO SALAD
YORKSHIRE PUDDING WITH SYRUP AND CREAM
This, I think, is one of my favorite Sunday lunches, but you can get away with it at any time the sun is warm enough to make a cold roast fillet of beef seem a treat. It’s certainly too expensive to produce if you believe people will think cold food a disappointment or an easy option.
Most of this lunch can be made in advance—you can cook the beef the day before and boil some beans in readiness for a quick sousing in sage and olive oil just before you eat. Make the mayonnaise on the morning of the day you’re serving lunch and all that will need doing around lunchtime is a tomato salad or green salad to go with it. I don’t think you need potatoes. You do, you see, have Yorkshire pudding coming too, not with the beef but after, as dessert, served searingly hot with golden syrup (see page 460) or honey poured over and thick whipped or, even better, clotted cream (page 457). This may sound odd, but remember that Yorkshire pudding is just a kind of popover, which specialty can be served with syrup for breakfast. This heavenly dessert version is not alone in its recasting of the traditional savory pudding. When I was young there was, tucked behind Fulham Road in London, a restaurant called the Hungry Horse where it was considered frightfully fashionable to go for Sunday lunch. One of the high points of its menu was Yorkshire pudding for every course.
COLD ROAST FILLET OF BEEF
I think people tend not to eat as much fillet as other cuts of beef, but I would still make a more generous allocation than the normal reckoning of 8 ounces per person, so instead of getting a 4-pound fillet I’d get one large fillet of 5 pounds. In fact, I’d probably take fright at the idea of skimpy portions once I was in the butcher’s and then nervously settle on the heavier weight. Anyway, who’s going to complain about leftover fillet sliced into cool thick slabs, smeared with mustard, and eaten with warm pebbly new potatoes and alligator-skinned cornichons or an astringent salsa verde (see page 181) or with thickly sliced floury boiled potatoes fried till crisp and blistered without, steamed creamily sweet within?
I would give the fillet about 8 minutes per pound, in a pretty hot but not searing oven (425°F). Remember that the beef will carry on cooking as it cools, and you do want it rare (or I do; adapt to please yourself). For exact doneness, roast the fillet to an internal temperature of 120°F for rare, 125°–130°F for medium-rare, or 140°F for medium. You really don’t need to do much to the beef after cooking. Just anoint it with some oil. I have some olive oil that has been infused with bay and rosemary, and this is what I’d use here. Normal olive oil, with no other seasoning, will be fine enough though, or you could make your own rosemary oil, see below. I sometimes add some mashed anchovies to the herbed or herbless oil, which I then apply as the meat-massaging unguent. The meat tastes good, too, simply wiped down with mustard to which you’ve added 2 teaspoons of oil.
So, you anoint the fillet, roast it, let it cool, wrap it in foil, and put it in the fridge. What you absolutely must remember to do is take it out of the fridge a good 2 hours before lunch. Yes, it should be cold, but it should not have the merest smack of the refrigerator’s chill about it. Alternatively, you could cook the fillet early on Sunday morning and let it cool in the kitchen to room temperature, even slightly above, so that you eat it not cold but not hot either. Always a pleasurable possibility.
If you think the fillet looks too spooky or too brown as it sits ready to be sliced, then do sprinkle with freshly chopped parsley or chives—not too many, just enough to lift it—or just carve it in readiness. You should, too, sprinkle with salt, unless of course you’ve mashed anchovies into it before roasting.
ROSEMARY AND ANCHOVY MAYONNAISE
Anchovy really does give something to meat (though this mayonnaise is also wonderful with crab cakes or indeed, any fish cakes).
You can use bought rosemary-infused oil, or make your own, or leave the rosemary out and let the anchovies speak eloquently for themselves.
9 anchovy fillets in olive oil, drained and minced
½ garlic clove, peeled and minced
3 egg yolks, at room temperature
1½ cups peanut or sunflower oil
squeezes lemon juice
8 scant tablespoons rosemary oil or olive oil infused with rosemary (see recipe below)
freshly milled black pepper
salt, if needed
Mash the anchovies and garlic to form a paste and then whisk together with the egg yolks in a large bowl. The egg yolks should be at room temperature. You can use an electric hand-held mixer (or, indeed, a free-standing one) bu
t what you can’t use, and I’m sorry to be a bore about this, is the food processor. Drip by slow drop, pour in the sunflower or peanut oil, whisking all the while. The mayonnaise should slowly emulsify. Squeeze in some lemon, going carefully. Don’t worry if it still doesn’t taste lemony enough now. Keep whisking and now add the rosemary oil, still pouring slowly. Taste and add the pepper, some salt—if, after the anchovies, you need it—and more lemon juice as wished. Cover with plastic film.
It’s best not to keep mayonnaise in the fridge but rather in a cool place. If the mayonnaise develops a greasy, glassy top (this tends to happen when it’s refrigerated), just skim this off with a spoon before serving.
ROSEMARY-INFUSED OIL
Put about 12 tablespoons of olive oil in a saucepan and add 3 tablespoons of rosemary leaves. Put on the heat and shake while warm and then let sizzle for a very short while, about 10 seconds. Pour through the finest mesh strainer. Don’t use the rosemary-infused oil in the mayonnaise until it has cooled, though it’s fine to massage a few warm tablespoons of it into the meat before roasting. This should give you enough for both.
WARM CANNELLINI OR CRANBERRY BEANS WITH GARLIC AND SAGE
It really doesn’t matter whether you use cannellini or cranberry beans here. I tend, more often, to use cannellini, just out of habit, I think, but adore the soft pink specklediness of cranberry beans, too. I suppose it’s just that I associate them more with soups. No matter; choose which you prefer.