4 tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter
½ cup all-purpose flour
1 2/3 cups milk
1 cup lamb or chicken stock
3 tablespoons capers plus 1 teaspoon vinegar, or more, from the jar
1 tablespoon chopped parsley (optional)
salt, if needed
freshly milled black pepper
Using the butter and flour, make the roux for the sauce (following the recipe for béchamel on page 19), pour in the milk and lamb stock as normal, and cook until thick. Stir in the capers (adding more if you want it more capery) and the 1 teaspoon of vinegar from the caper bottle. Taste and add more vinegar if you think it’s needed. I like this fairly sharp and might well add another teaspoon of caper juice, but proceed cautiously. If using, add the parsley. Season, if needed, with salt and do not be reticent with the pepper.
To be frank, although it’s hardly traditional, I love caper sauce with roast pork, too. Its sour-noted velvetiness goes wonderfully with the densely woven sweetness of the meat. More often, though, I go for onion (or leek) sauce, but habit plays a large part in the lunch repertoire, I do see.
For regular, ordinary weekend roast pork I get a fresh ham; ask the butcher for boneless knuckle-half, a 6–8-pound cut. Roast it at 425°F for 1 hour and then turn it down to 325°F. To work out the total cooking time, think along the lines of 22–25 minutes per pound plus 25 minutes, or cook to an internal temperature of 160°F.
If you’re going to do just plain fresh ham, then follow the instructions for roast potatoes given with the roast beef (page 253) and work a timetable out for yourself. At least you’re not bothering with the Yorkshire pudding, so there are fewer major factors to take into consideration. With this I love sliced green beans and cabbage—huge bowlfuls with butter and black pepper or, as my mother often made it, with caraway seeds. The only time I like red cabbage is with pork, too, so I’ll give a recipe for that while I’m about it.
SWEETLY NOSTALGIC LUNCH FOR 6
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ROAST FRESH HAM
ROAST POTATOES
RED CABBAGE COOKED IN THE VIENNESE FASHION
STEM-GINGER GINGERBREAD WITH SHARP CHEESE, OR APPLE BUTTERSCOTCH TART
ROAST FRESH HAM
If at all possible, get your ham with its skin, and roast according to the method above. And, to make sure the skin becomes a true crackling and not damp, chewy rind, make sure you don’t cover the ham while it’s in the fridge (plastic film will give it a very sloppy kiss of death). Score it with a sharp knife before roasting. I do it the easy way: I ask the butcher to score it; his knives are better than mine, for a start. Besides, the purpose of going to a good butcher is to make sure the meat is beautifully handled, cut, and prepared as well as fresh and well chosen.
If you’re stuck with scoring the skin yourself, then take a sharp knife and cut lines on the diagonal at about 1-inch intervals. If you want, you can then do the same the other way, so you have a diamond pattern etched into the rind. But that’s not necessary, and it is easier not to.
I like to rub English mustard powder onto the scored, wiped skin, or the surface fat if the ham is rindless (give it a quick go-over with some paper towel just to make sure it’s really dry). Or you can sprinkle on salt. Some people dribble vinegar on, but I am not convinced.
A tip from my butcher, David Lidgate: to make sure the crackling is properly crunchy all over, when you take the ham out of the oven, quickly peel off the crackling, cut it into 2 or 3 pieces, and put it in a hot tray and back into the oven, turning it back up to 425°F as you do so. Start carving and when you’re done, take out the crackling, break it into more pieces, and put it on a plate in the middle of the table for people to take as they like. The pieces of crackling that come from the nether parts of the leg will obviously be damper and take longer to crisp than those from the top part, so don’t take all the crackling out of the oven at the same time.
My mother loved red cabbage, so I am fond of this dish. On the whole, I don’t like savory food that’s fruity and jammy, but in the right weather and in the right mood, it can be fabulous, aromatic, and warming, and with just enough edge to stop it from cloying. I prefer it with roast pork rather than the more usual goose or duck. I think it actually benefits from being eaten with a meat that offers light to its shade. I love it with sausages, too. And it works beautifully with just-fried, still-moussy calf’s liver.
The advantage of fruity stewed red cabbage is that it can be made in advance and moreover is the better for it. This recipe comes from a lovely book, Arabella Boxer’s Garden Cookbook, which I picked up at a dusty second-hand bookshop. This book came out in the mid-1970s, so it is exactly contemporaneous with my memories of the red cabbage my mother used to cook. I seem to remember, though, my mother always used brown sugar, and a rich molasses-y one at that. And I had no idea that the culinary style this invoked was Viennese, but I rather love the idea—it certainly adds charm.
RED CABBAGE COOKED IN THE VIENNESE FASHION
1 large red cabbage, quartered, cored, outer leaves removed and discarded
½ cup beef dripping or other fat, such as vegetable oil, butter (with a drop of oil added to prevent burning), or rendered chicken fat
1 Spanish onion, chopped
2 tablespoons light brown sugar, plus more, if needed
1 large cooking apple, unpeeled and cored
3 tablespoons red wine or cider vinegar, plus more, if needed
salt and freshly milled black pepper
1¼ cups beef stock
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
¼ cup tablespoons cream, sour cream, or crème fraîche
Shred the cabbage finely. Even by hand this doesn’t take long. And as this recipe predates the food processor, I tend, nostalgically, to eschew machine cutters here. Illogical of course—I use an electric mixer for pastry happily enough. But then I never saw my mother make pastry.
Melt or heat the fat in a deep, heavy casserole. Add the onion and cook until it starts to soften and color. Add the sugar and stir around until all is golden. Put in the cabbage and mix well. Chop the apple and add it to the cabbage. Add the vinegar and season with the salt and black pepper. Stir well, cover, and cook for 15 minutes over a low heat.
Heat the stock and pour into the casserole. Cook for 2 hours on top of the stove or in a 325°F oven. When the time is up, mix the flour and cream to a paste in a cup and add it to the cabbage by degrees, stirring all the time, on top of the stove.
Cook over a low heat for 4 or 5 minutes to cook the flour and thicken the sauce. Taste and add more sugar or vinegar if necessary—the sweet and sour elements should be nicely balanced, not like the culinary outpourings of a provincial Chinese takeout, so go steady—or add more salt and black pepper.
If you are making this in advance—which is always a good idea—reheat it, covered, in its casserole for an hour at 350°F, or on the stove for markedly less time. Serves 6–8.
If you’re not making the cabbage, turn to page 327 for a recipe for applesauce, only I wouldn’t strain it here. My grandmother always ate horseradish with her pork; you could think of doing likewise. Similarly, if I weren’t bothering with the red cabbage, I’d cook an apple dessert like baked apples, apple crumble, apple pie, or—especially good after the pork—this sour-sweet apple butterscotch tart. Otherwise, dense, wet and aromatic gingerbread (page 114) and some sharp and crumbly cheese such as Lancashire or Wensleydale would be perfect.
APPLE BUTTERSCOTCH TART
1 recipe Plain Pastry Dough (page 37) made with 1 cup Italian 00 or all-purpose flour
1 pound cooking apples (or substitute rhubarb or blackberries), peeled, cored, and sliced fairly thinly
2/3 cup light muscovado sugar or light brown sugar
¼ cup all-purpose flour
pinch salt
2 eggs
¼ cup heavy cream
Make the pastry and line an 8-inch tart pan with it. Fill the shell with the apples and sprea
d over the top a walnut-colored butterscotch paste made by mixing the sugar with the flour, salt, and the eggs beaten with the cream. Bake at 425°F for 10 minutes, and then lower the heat to 350°F and cook for another 20 minutes or so or until the pastry is golden and the filling is set.
If you want a dessert that is altogether lighter (and can be cooked in advance), then try the rhubarb and muscat jelly (page 312), substituting freshly squeezed orange juice for the muscat if you want something suitably alcohol-free for children (although I wouldn’t presume they’d dislike the unctuous grapiness of the wine). There is an established culinary connection, anyway, between rhubarb and pork; the Swedes eat rhubarb purée with pork much as we do applesauce. I suggest some variation on this theme—just get a stick or two of rhubarb, cook until it turns into a pinky-khaki mush, and, when it’s cool, stir it into a cup of bought horseradish sauce.
CALMING WINTER LUNCH FOR 6
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ROAST PORK LOIN WITH ROAST LEEKS
CLAPSHOT, A VEGETABLE PURÉE, WITH BURNT ONIONS
CUSTARD TART
Much as I love roast fresh ham, I don’t cook it that much; roast boned and rolled loin, without the rind, is my more regular pig-out. I feel at ease with it, even though the flesh can tend to dry stringiness. Ask the butcher for rib-end of loin (hard to carve, but wonderful tasting). And put a little liquid in the roasting pan so the meat grows tender in its own small pool of odoriferous steam. Anything will do—a glass of wine or cider, some stock, water mixed with apple juice, the leftover liquid you’ve cooked carrots in.
WITH GARLIC AND FRESH GINGER
WITH DRIED BAY LEAVES
Cooking boned and rolled pork loin bears almost any interpretation or elaboration. By elaboration, I mean not to imply complexity of culinary arrangement but wide-rangingness. If you want, at other times, to add a modern, fusiony note, make a paste of garlic and fresh ginger and smear that over the roast. If you want something altogether less vibrant, then pulverize some dried bay leaves, and press these against the fat. Or rub in ground cloves, cinnamon, and cardamom to produce an almost Middle Eastern waft.
GROUND CLOVES, CINNAMON, AND CARDAMOM
Get the butcher to remove the bones and give them to you so you can cook them around the joint, which will make the gravy. And while you’re about it, ask him to chop them up small. The loin should be left elegantly wrapped in its pearly coating of fat. If there’s not enough fat on the joint, it will end up too dry.
ROAST LOIN OF PORK
You will need a boned loin of about 4 pounds. If you’re a good carver, don’t bother with boning, but have the butcher cut through the chine bone to ease carving.
Preheat the oven to 425°F. Work out how long the loin needs—and at roughly 20 minutes per pound, for a 4-pound roast that’s about 80 minutes, or cook to an internal temperature of 150°–155°F. About halfway through the pork’s cooking time, throw a glass of wine (or whatever you’re using; cider would be very good here) into the pan.
I am not one of nature’s gravy makers, and therefore I do everything to make life easier for myself—and frankly suggest you do too. As for this gravy, all you need to do is pour the winy juices from the meat dish into a sauceboat or bowl, removing fat if you can and if you need to. Taste it; you may need to add a little bit of water, you may just want to use it as is. I am not, on the whole, a thick-gravy person; you may be. For a recipe for applesauce to go with, see page 328, only again I wouldn’t strain it here.
ROAST LEEKS
For 6 people, get about 8 not-too-fat leeks (although one each would probably be enough, I’d always rather have over). Once you’ve made sure they’re clean, cut them on the diagonal into logs about 3 inches long. Pour some olive oil in a roasting pan and turn the leeks in it so they’re glossy all over. Sprinkle over some coarse sea salt and roast for about 30 minutes at 425°F. I usually roast them at a higher temperature and for slightly less time, but it would be absurd to complicate matters, as you’re going to have the oven at this temperature anyway.
I love these leeks blistered sweet on the outside, suggestively oniony within their slithery center. I know that there are going to be onions themselves with the clapshot, but the pork can take the double helping of allium. If you feel otherwise, make a large, iron-dark bowl of butter-drenched kale. Kale, indeed, is a feature of traditional clapshot; this recipe makes do without and it is tempting to make up the shortfall. If you wanted to add a slightly more modern touch, then simply get some bok choi or choi sum and steam or stir-fry it with or without lacily grated ginger.
CLAPSHOT WITH BURNT ONIONS
I got the idea for this traditional British dish from a supermarket recipe collection. It is a modern take on old-fashioned clapshot, which is a delicious hodge-podge of various vegetables cooked and mushed together. This is something not so stylish as to be self-conscious but not so hearty as to be indigestible.
2 pounds rutabagas, peeled and diced
2 pounds floury potatoes, peeled and quartered
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter
salt and freshly milled black pepper
whole nutmeg
4 tablespoons olive oil
2 large onions, very thinly sliced
2 tablespoons superfine sugar
Put the rutabagas in a saucepan of boiling, salted water and simmer for about 5 minutes. Add the potatoes and simmer for 25–30 more minutes until both are just cooked. Don’t overcook or they will disintegrate into potato soup. Drain thoroughly.
Dry the rutabagas and potatoes slightly by putting them back in the saucepan (which you’ve wiped dry) and placing it over a low heat. Then mash—with a potato ricer or mouli—with the butter. Season with the salt and pepper to taste, adding a good grating of fresh nutmeg.
While the potatoes and rutabagas are cooking, get started with the onion-burning. Heat the oil in a heavy-bottomed frying pan over low heat. Add the onions to the oil and cook slowly for about 30 minutes until crisp and golden brown, stirring and scraping from time to time. Turn heat to high and sprinkle with sugar and stir continuously for a further 3 minutes or so until the sugar caramelizes and the onion darkens.
Put the clapshot in a serving bowl and top with the burnt onions.
CUSTARD TART
I adore custard tart—I love its barely vanilla-scented, nutmeggy softness, the silky texture of that buttermilk-colored eggy cream, solidified just enough to be carved into trembling wedges on the plate. It isn’t hard to make, but I botch it often out of sheer clumsiness. But now I have learnt my lessons, and pass them on to you. One—pour the custard into the pastry shell while the pastry is in the oven, so that you don’t end up leaving a trail from kitchen counter to stove, soaking the pastry shell in the process. And two—don’t be so keen to use up every last scrap of that custard, filling the shell right to the very brim so that it’s bound—as you knew it was—to spill, making it soggy and ruining the contrast between crisp crust and tender filling. If you can manage to do both those things, then you can make a perfect custard pie. I won’t promise it’s an easy exercise, though.
If you want to eat it cold, this makes life easier, as you can arrange to have free play with the oven the day before. But, at its best, the custard should still have a memory of heat about it. Make it before you put the pork in the oven and let it sit for 1½ hours or thereabouts, gently subsiding into muted warmth in the kitchen.
If you can’t be bothered to make the pastry yourself, you have a choice: either you can use a bought crust, or don’t bother with a crust at all and make a baked custard. For a baked custard, make double quantities of custard, then pour it into a pie dish (with a capacity of just over 4 cups), stand the pie dish in a roasting pan filled with hot water, and bake in a 300°F oven for about 1 hour.
If you don’t keep vanilla sugar—although I do recommend it; see page 72—then just add vanilla extract to the mixture. Of course you can always add an actual vanilla bean to the milk and cream when you warm them, but actuall
y I don’t like baked custard with too much vanilla; I like the merest musky suggestion of it.
1 recipe Rich Pastry Dough (page 38)
1 egg, separated (reserve the yolk for the custard)
FOR THE CUSTARD
3 eggs plus the reserved yolk
2 tablespoons vanilla sugar or superfine sugar
¼ teaspoon pure vanilla extract, if not using vanilla sugar
1¼ cups light cream
2/3 cup milk
pinch ground mace
whole nutmeg
Preheat the oven to 400°F. Make the pastry, line an 8-inch tart pan with it, and bake blind for about 20 minutes, following the instructions on page 39. Take out of the oven and remove the beans and paper or foil. Beat the egg white lightly, brush the bottom and sides of the cooked pastry shell with it (the idea being to seal the pastry so the custard won’t make it soggy later on), and put back in the oven for 5 minutes. Turn down the oven to 325°F.
For the custard, put the eggs, yolk, and sugar and vanilla, if using, in a bowl and whisk together. Warm the cream and milk in a saucepan with the mace and pour into the egg mixture. Stir to mix and then strain into the pastry shell as it sits on the pulled-out rack in the oven. Grate over some nutmeg. Push the shelf back in carefully but confidently (tense hesitation can be disastrous, far too jerky), shut the door, and leave the custard pie in the oven to bake for about 45 minutes. Take a look though, after about 35 minutes. The custard, when it’s ready, should look more or less solid but still with a tremble at its center.
Take out of the oven, grate some more nutmeg over it, and leave until it reaches tepid heaven.
If pork is not cooked often enough, salmon is overexposed. It can, though, be just right.
SPRING LUNCH FOR 8
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How to Eat Page 38