How to Eat

by Nigella Lawson

  There’s no need to make a big song and dance about what you drink with what, but I wanted to offer something good in the way of guidance. Following each menu, then, are brief notes by that distinguished but relaxed Notting Hill wine merchant, John Armit. He begins:

  JOHN ARMIT’S WINE RECOMMENDATIONS

  In general I have chosen one wine, although you could always choose to have two, say a white with the starter and a red with the main course. Many people would also choose a dessert wine: a muscat or a Sauternes from France, or a sweet German wine.

  WINTER DINNER, WITH SUMMER POSSIBILITIES, FOR 6

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  CAESAR SALAD

  LOIN OF PORK WITH BAY LEAVES AND LENTILS OR CANNELLINI BEANS

  RHUBARB IN ICE CREAM, CUSTARD, JELLY, OR TRIFLE

  This is perfect in January, when the rhubarb is new, trim-limbed, and Barbie pink; how you cook it, eat it, is up to you. I have tried to limit my suggestions, but not that hard—I want still to urge you rhubarbward. This menu works too in summer, when the rhubarb may be nearer khaki-colored and have slightly more spreading thighs, but will still have that peculiar mixture between delicacy and resonance. In summer I’d cook the pork maybe slightly in advance and leave it to cool for an hour before slicing it thickly and arranging it on a large, oval plate.

  CAESAR SALAD

  In my years as a restaurant critic I railed against the messed-about Caesar salad. So many chefs want to do their bit—to shave the cheese rather than grate it, so you lose that fabulous leaf-thickening coating, to throw in whole fresh anchovies, to substitute designer lettuce—and every addition is a loss. Perfection cannot be improved upon. And so what am I doing here, replacing the classic garlic croutons with small cubes of garlicky roast potatoes? Well, I do this because this is how it happened. Let me explain.

  The first time I made the ceviche (see page 314) for dinner one summer, I thought it might be wonderful with some hot and salty crouton-sized, roast, diced potatoes. Reader: I was not wrong. After that, and because anything that’s in the oven gives me less grief than anything ever does on the stove, I took to roasting a small dice of potatoes and using them in place of croutons in salads all the time. I get a freezer bag, put in the potatoes unpeeled but diced, about ½-inch square, maybe slightly smaller sometimes, throw chopped garlic after them and then add 2 tablespoons olive oil. (When I’m in a hurry, I forget the garlic and use garlic-infused oil instead.) I shake the bag about so that the oil disperses and covers all the cubes of potato, empty them onto a baking pan, and then roast them for 45 minutes to 1 hour in a 400°F oven. When they’re glistening brown, I lay them on some paper towels and sprinkle with coarse sea salt. Then I chuck them into some dressed, tossed leaves—and, let me tell you, that’s all you need.

  As I said, a Caesar salad is perfect in its original incarnation, but if you add potatoes in place of the croutons for a first-course Caesar salad, you won’t need to bother with potatoes for the main course. So that’s one less thing to worry about or find burner or oven space for; lentils or cannellini are both vegetable and filler.

  This then is what I call, in my notes, Caesar, mia.

  If you want to add anchovies—which aren’t actually a feature of Caesar Cardini’s original version but are so often used they almost count as authentic, and are certainly good in it—just mash one or two up with the olive oil before anointing and tossing the salad.

  8 ounces floury or boiling potatoes, peeled and diced

  2–3 large garlic cloves, to taste, minced

  about 6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

  2 eggs

  leaves from 4–6 heads baby romaine lettuce or 2–3 heads regular romaine

  pinch salt, plus more, if needed

  freshly milled black pepper

  drops Worcestershire sauce

  juice of 1 lemon

  1/3 cup freshly grated Parmesan

  Make the “croutons” using the potatoes, garlic, and 2 tablespoons of the oil as directed in the headnote. You don’t want them to go on the salad when searingly hot, so cool on some paper towels for about 10 minutes.

  Put some water on for the eggs, put a matchstick into the pan (this stops the white flowing out if the shell cracks), and then, when boiling, lower in the eggs and boil for exactly 1 minute. Remove and set aside.

  Tear the romaine leaves into eatable sizes and toss with the remaining 3–4 tablespoons olive oil to coat well but lightly. Sprinkle over the salt and several grinds of pepper and toss again. Shake over about 6 drops of the Worcestershire sauce, drizzle over the lemon juice, break in the eggs, and toss to blend. Correct the seasoning. Toss with the cheese and then with the potato croutons at the very last minute, as you bring it to the table—no sooner, or the salad will wilt.

  LOIN OF PORK WITH BAY LEAVES

  If you’ve got time, leave the pork in its marinade-rub for 12 or even 24 hours. But otherwise, just do the necessary when you get home in the evening. By roasting the pork at 400°F you can accommodate both croutons and meat. You want the loin boned with a very thin layer of fat still on and tied at regular intervals. That’s why I go to the butcher. And ask him to chop the bones and give them to you to take home while he’s about it.

  6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

  4 garlic cloves, bruised and crushed with the flat side of a knife

  1 teaspoon salt

  6 peppercorns, bruised

  16 bay leaves, 6 crumbled, plus more whole leaves, for garnish

  1 medium onion, sliced finely

  1 4-pound boneless pork loin (see headnote)

  ½ cup white wine

  In a small bowl mix the olive oil, garlic, salt, peppercorns, and crumbled bay leaves and rub the mixture all over the meat. Put the pork on a large dish or in a large plastic bag and cover the dish or tie up the bag and leave in the fridge if you’ve got steeping time; otherwise—if you’re about to start cooking it—just leave it out.

  Preheat the oven to 400°F. Line a roasting pan with the onion. Strew over the onion 10 whole bay leaves. Place the pork, including its marinade, on top and the bones all around, if they fit and if you’ve got them. Roast in the oven for about 13⁄4 hours or to an internal temperature of 150°–155°F, basting regularly.

  Remove the pork, scraping burnt bits off, to a plate or carving board and let it sit. On the stove at moderate heat, pour the wine and ½ cup boiling water over the bones, bay, garlic, and onion. Let it bubble up and reduce by about a third, and then remove the bones gingerly and strain the liquid contents into a saucepan. Heat, correct the seasoning, and add liquid as you like to make a good, thin, not-quite gravy.

  Carve, put the slices on a big warmed plate, sprinkle with salt, and pour over a little of the juice-gravy, then tent with foil and leave in the turned-off oven while you eat the starter. It is a bit prinky, I know, but it will look fabulous if, when you take it out, you arrange, Napoleonically, some more bay leaves around the edges of the dish with the bay-scented pork.

  PUY LENTILS OR CANNELLINI BEANS

  Puy lentils or cannellini beans, or indeed any legumes, would do with this. The lentils have the advantage of not needing to be soaked. And I would leave them pretty plain—for 6 people, if it’s the only vegetable, just use 1 pound. Cover with abundant water, then bring to the boil, add salt, and simmer for 30–45 minutes. Drain, put the pan back on the heat with some oil (not too much, though; you’ll have the meat-juice gravy to pour over later) together with 2 garlic cloves, minced or sliced, and the finely chopped zest of ½ lemon. Turn in the warm oil for a minute or so, then put the lentils back in and toss well, tasting for salt and pepper as usual. Treat soaked beans similarly, only they’ll need longer cooking (you won’t get arrested for using canned, but I can’t pretend they’re as good), and I’d omit the lemon zest and add a little more garlic. Sprinkle over some chopped parsley when they’re in their serving dish.

  Now for the rhubarb. Even in winter, I love this rhubarb ice cream. It’s not just the taste—which
is delicate-scented perfection—but its very extraordinariness, its almost exotic rarity, which is all the more distinctive for the markedly unexotic nature of its chief ingredient. Now that you can buy so much good ice cream in the shops, it often seems hardly worth making your own, but this one you couldn’t buy. If you haven’t got an ice-cream maker (not that ice cream is impossible without; see page 254), then make the rhubarb custard. To call this custard an invention would be pushing it, but it is one of my favorite culinary accidents. It came about simply because I was stewing some rhubarb and forgot felt I really had to do something with the ensuing, practically formless pulp, so I stirred it into some eggs, sugar, and milk, poured it into a dish, put that dish in a pan of water, and baked it. The result was ambrosial. And typically, because I’d done this as a last-minute damage-limitation exercise, I hadn’t any precise idea of the ratio of rhubarb to the other custard ingredients. I had to do it three more times before I got it to taste as good as it had the first accidental time. Take it out of the oven about 1 hour before you want to eat it. This really does mean you could do with a double oven if you’re eating the pork hot. But you could always bake the custard first—it won’t really be warm, but it shouldn’t be cool, either.

  My rhubarb and muscat jelly is, in a different way, a kitchen accident as well. I’d been making some rhubarb fool and ended up with half a measuring cup of excess pink syrup. I decided to make a jelly out of it, and muscat seemed like a good idea (and see below). This, in turn, led to the rhubarb, muscat, and mascarpone trifle (and refer, you must, to page 107). The last of my suggestions here is the rhubarb meringue pie on page 234; but look up rhubarb in the Index if you’re up for more.

  RHUBARB ICE CREAM

  I can’t pretend this is the easy option. If you want to make something simple, cook the rhubarb as below, but just stir it into some whipped heavy cream and make fool instead.

  If you’ve got vanilla sugar, then use that; otherwise, you can add a vanilla bean, halved lengthways, to the rhubarb as you cook it, or just stir in best vanilla extract before you freeze the custard mix. And if you’re using summer rhubarb, which won’t make the perfect blush-pink cream of the early growth, nothing’s to stop you adding the merest pin-drop of pink food coloring.

  2 pounds rhubarb, trimmed

  1½ cups vanilla or superfine sugar, plus ¼ cup superfine sugar or more, if needed

  1¼ cups light cream

  3 egg yolks

  1¼ cups heavy cream

  1½ teaspoons pure vanilla extract, if not using vanilla sugar

  Preheat the oven to 375°F. Put the rhubarb in a baking dish with the 1½ cups sugar. Cover with foil and bake in the oven for 45 minutes to an hour until utterly soft and cooked. You can cook it on the stove, but the color won’t stay as bright. Drain, reserving the juice, and put the pulp in a bowl to cool. Beat well with a fork so it’s smooth.

  Put the light cream on to boil, but take off the heat just before it does. Pour it over the yolks beaten with the ¼ cup sugar. Half-fill the sink with cold water (this is because you need to stop the custard cooking as soon as it’s thickened) and then get on with the custard by putting the cream mixture into a clean saucepan on lowish heat. Stir with a wooden spoon constantly. In about 10 minutes the custard should have thickened (see page 32 if you need more information here). Plunge the pan into the cold water in the sink and carry on stirring energetically for a minute or so. When it’s cool, stir in the rhubarb pulp. Then whip the heavy cream and add to the fruit custard. Taste, as you may well need more sugar; add it 1 tablespoon at a time, but remember, when the mixture’s frozen, the sweetness will seem reduced. Add the vanilla extract here, too, if you haven’t used vanilla sugar.

  Freeze in an ice-cream maker, or see page 331.

  For some reason this is fabulous with really good dark chocolate cookies, or else those plain discs of dark thin chocolate. As for the reserved rhubarb cooking liquid, add a slug or two of muscat wine (or sugar and water) and boil down till you’ve got a thick syrup, pour into a small pitcher, and let people dribble it over their ice cream, or freeze it, unreduced, and make jelly with it later. The ice cream is best enjoyed as soon after churning as possible.

  RHUBARB CUSTARD

  2¼ pounds rhubarb, trimmed and cut into 1¼-inch lengths

  ½ cup sugar

  4 eggs

  4 egg yolks

  ½ cup vanilla or superfine sugar plus more, if needed

  1 vanilla bean or 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract, if not using vanilla sugar

  2½ cups milk

  Put the rhubarb into a large saucepan with ½ cup water and the ½ cup sugar. Put the lid on and bring to the boil. In about 5 minutes you should have pulp. Pour it into a strainer over a bowl or large measuring cup to catch juice, but don’t push it through the strainer.

  Preheat the oven to 325°F. Put the kettle on. Set an ovenproof dish with a capacity of 7–8 cups (I use one of those oval cream stoneware dishes, the sort that rhubarb custard was just meant to be in) on a baking sheet. In another bowl, beat together with a fork the eggs, egg yolks, and vanilla sugar, if using, or superfine sugar. Taste for sweetness and add more sugar, if needed.

  If using the vanilla bean, add it to the milk. Bring the milk to a boil and, beating with a fork, add the milk to the egg mixture. When combined, stir in the vanilla extract, if using, and the well-drained rhubarb. Do this gently; you don’t want an homogenous all-rose affair but a pale, yellowing-parchment cream shot through with that gloweringly intense taffeta pink. Pour into the baking dish and pour the hot water around the dish, to come around halfway up.

  Bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour or until, when the top is touched, the custard quivers but is not liquid. Remove from the pan of water; the custard will continue to set as it stands in the kitchen waiting to be eaten.

  RHUBARB AND MUSCAT JELLY

  This is spectacular—it’s beautiful when the poached rhubarb, fresh out of the oven, sits in its orange-flecked juices, and just so pretty, when it’s set and shining and the sweetest pale fuscia. But because of that color, don’t set it in a ring mold—it makes it look slightly gynecological. I use an old-fashioned, bulbously curving castle mould. You can get them now made in plastic, which is easier to unmold than the old copper ones.

  When the new season’s rhubarb comes in, clementines are available, so I often, in place of the orange called for, just halve a clementine, squeeze in the juice by hand, and then throw in the consequently crushed and pulpy peel. Blood oranges are, however, best. They intensify the already vivid tints.

  As for the wine, of course use whichever muscat you like.

  2 pounds rhubarb, trimmed and cut into ½–1-inch lengths

  1 2/3 cups superfine sugar, plus more, if needed

  juice and zest of 1 orange, plus more juice, if needed

  8 leaves gelatin or 2 envelopes granulated gelatin

  About ¾ cup muscat wine

  Preheat the oven to 375°F.

  Put the rhubarb into a large ovenproof dish. I find a rectangular one measuring 12 × 8 × 2 inches perfect for the job. Sprinkle over the sugar, add the orange juice and zest, and 2 cups of water, and cover, either with a lid or with foil. Bake for 1 hour. Take out of the oven, remove lid, and let cool.

  Strain carefully into a large measuring cup. I find this gives about 3 cups. Put the pulp aside (you can freeze it for use in the custard or trifle). If using granulated gelatin, soften it in ¼ cup of the muscat, about 5 minutes. Heat the mixture in the top of a double boiler over simmering water until the gelatin has dissolved, about 1 minute, and add to the rhubarb juice. Pour the remaining muscat into the juice to bring it up to 33⁄4 cups; if not using granulated gelatin, add the muscat as is to the juice to the required measurement. Taste; you may want some more sugar or a squeeze more orange or, indeed, more muscat.

  Lightly oil a 4-cup jelly mold by dabbing a paper towel in some suitably flavorless oil and then rubbing it over the interior of the mold. Soak gelatin leaves in a dish
of cold water until softened. Put 2 ladlefuls of rhubarb and muscat syrup in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Squeeze out the gelatin leaves and whisk into the syrup. When they’ve dissolved, pour the contents of the pan back into the measuring cup. If you want to make sure everything’s well enough blended, you can pour from the cup to the pan and back into the cup again. Pour into the jelly mold and place in the fridge to chill and set, about 6 hours or overnight.

  An Italian red, preferably a 1997 or 1998 Dolcetto d’Alba from Giacomo Conterno or Bruno Giacosa, would be perfect here.

  EXTRAVAGANT BUT STILL ELEGANT DINNER FOR 8

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  HOT SAUSAGES WITH ICE-COLD OYSTERS, OR CEVICHE WITH HOT GARLIC POTATOES

  THE TENDEREST CHICKEN, WITH GREEN SALAD AND GARLIC POTATOES

  CHOCOLATE RASPBERRY PUDDING CAKE WITH RASPBERRIES AND YOGURT

  This is the sort of dinner I dream of, the perfect birthday dinner party for someone who likes oysters and whose birthday (like mine) falls on a suitable date. You can get oysters all the year round now (or some types), but they’re still best in winter. Buy an oyster knife at the same time as your oysters, 6 per person. Ask the fish seller for proper instructions as to cleaning (if necessary) and opening. And you’ll need either coarse salt or crushed ice to set them on. I used to eat oysters and sausages at chef Alastair Little’s first, eponymous restaurant in Frith Street in London. He served the most inspired starter in town—cold, cold oysters with hot, spicy Chinesey sausages.