by Tom Stobart
Pork Chops in Cider
Score 4 pork chops on one side and ease them away from the bone. Slit the fat diagonally in several places on the outside to prevent the chop curling up when it is cooking. Chop 2 tablespoons of fresh herbs and use them to fill the slits in the meat. Crush 8 juniper berries and place them in the meat, 2 to a chop. Marinate the chops in 300 ml (½ pt) cider for an hour. Remove the chops and season them with salt and pepper on the opposite side to the herbs. Heat the grill to the maximum heat and grill the chops, in the grill pan (not on the rack) for about 2 minutes on each side. Turn down the grill and, after about 10 minutes, drain off the excess fat. Add the marinade and cook for a further 5 minutes or until no pink shows in the chops. Serve them garnished with 1 tablespoon each of chopped capers and gherkins.
Cider Cake
Heat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4. Grease and line a 17 cm (7 in) cake pan. Grate the peel of an orange and squeeze it. Make up the juice to 300 ml (½ pt) with sweet cider. Cream 100 g (4 oz) butter and 175 g (6 oz) caster sugar with the orange rind until the mixture is light and fluffy. Beat in 2 eggs, one at a time. Sift 225 g (8 oz) flour with ½ teaspoon each powdered cinnamon and allspice; stir into the butter mixture alternately with the cider, beating until smooth after each addition. Turn the batter into the pan. Bake for about 1 hour, or until the cake feels firm to the touch and a warmed skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Leave the cake to cool for 10 minutes, then turn it out. Serve it with apple purée and whipped cream.
[Cider – French: cidre German: Apfelwein, Apfelmost Italian: sidro Spanish: sidra]
CILANTRO. See coriander.
CINNAMON and CASSIA. Cinnamon, which many only know as a powdered spice, is the dried bark of a tree (Cinnamomum zeylanicum), a native of Ceylon and adjacent parts of South India. When cinnamon trees are 2-3 years old, cutting begins. The bark is stripped off and flattened; after the corky outside is planed away, it is ready to be dried. It rolls up into a scroll and is known as a quill. Several quills are usually packed together, one inside the other.
In the related cassia (Cinnamomum cassia), the bark is thicker, it is not usually planed clean on the outside or packed quill inside quill. Cassia is rather more pungent than true cinnamon and has a less delicate taste. In many countries, the two are sold as one, but in others (including Britain) this is now not allowed, although much confusion remains.
Cinnamon is one of the most important spices; it is very common in sweet dishes, for which it is best bought ground (in small quantities, as ground cinnamon quickly loses its aroma and becomes stale).It is anyway difficult to grind to atomic fineness at home. In savoury meat dishes – and there are many in which cinnamon is used, especially in mutton dishes influenced by the cooking of the Middle East – the spice can be added in whole pieces or ground in a simple coffee mill (which is kept for grinding spices). Like all spices, it keeps its flavour best when whole. However, cinnamon sticks are thin and inclined to break up into small splinters, which are a nuisance in food. This is one reason for using cassia, which breaks up less easily, in pilaus. In Indian dishes, cassia is also more correct. Cinnamon, though, is better for sweet dishes. The powerfully antiseptic essential oils in cinnamon help to preserve food. The leaves of the cassia, under their Indian name of tej pat, are also used in Indian cooking.
[Cinnamon – French: cannelle German: Zimt Italian: cannella Spanish: canela.
Cassia – French: casse German: Kassie Italian: cassia Spanish: casia]
CITRIC ACID. A fairly weak organic acid, which occurs particularly in the juice of lemons and other citrus fruits, as well as in many other fruits, in wine and even cheese. One of the few acids used in the kitchen in pure, crystalline form, it is included in recipes for home-made soft drinks and in yeast nutrients for home-made wine. lt is a useful stand-by souring agent, can be made to do in place of lemon juice and is perhaps preferable to bottled lemon juice, which sometimes has a nasty flavour. Commercially, it is made by a fermentation involving citric acid producing organisms. Citric acid has anti-oxidant properties and, in dilute solution, will prevent cut vegetable surfaces browning. It is also preservative, but less so than the acetic acid of vinegar.
[Citric acid – French: acide citrique German: Zitronensäure Italian: acido citric Spanish: ácido cítrico]
CITRON. A citrus fruit which looks like a large, warty lemon with very thick peel. They can sometimes be found on sale in Italy. The citron was the first citrus fruit to reach Europe (it probably originated in India), and the ancient Greeks found them growing in the land of the Medes and Persians (hence its botanical name, Citrus medica). It was later cultivated in the famous Hanging Gardens of Babylon and used to perfume toilet waters.
The main use for citron in the kitchen is as a candied peel. It has a resinous taste and is thicker than other candied peels. Citron is made into a liqueur in some parts of the Mediterranean – this is called Kitrinos in the Cyclades and cédratine in Corsica.
[Citron – French: citron German: Zitron Italian: cedro Spanish: cidra]
CITRUS FRUIT are a very closely related group, all coming from shrubs or small trees of the genus Citrus, which grows from the tropics to warm but temperate regions such as southern Europe. They are all rich in vitamin C. Their sweetness or sourness depends on the balance between the sugars and fruit acids which together form 80-90% of the solid matter that is dissolved in the juice. The main sweet species are the Sweet *orange (C. sinensis), and tangerine or mandarin (C. reticulata); the *grapefruit (C. paradisi), Seville *orange (C. aurantium), *lemon (C. limon) and *lime (C. aurantifolia) range from less sweet to definitely acid. Other species are the *citron (C. medica),*shaddock (C. grandis) and papeda (C. hystrix).The bergamot (C. bergamia) is used mainly in perfumery – its skin, like that of other citrus fruits, contains aromatic essential oils. A related genus, Fortunella, includes the *kumquats. There are also hybrids (such as tangelos, e.g. the ugli, which are grapefruit X tangerine), varieties and forms which are known in their own right (such as the ortanique, a flattened, thin-skinned Sweet orange, which might be a hybrid) and one or two types of uncertain origin, such as the clementine (which could either be tangerine X Sweet orange or a variety of tangerine).
CLABBER. Thick, sour milk which has not separated into curds and whey. Clabbering is souring milk until it reaches this point.
CLAM. A term applied to various types of bivalve mollusc. The British tend to think of them as American – clam chowder, clam bakes, clam juice and canned clam broth. ‘A kind of cockle’, says a Victorian cookery book, ‘to be found on the west coast of Ireland and Scotland, and in Devonshire and Cornwall, and some parts of Wales. Though they figure largely in American cookery they are not much used in England.’ Clam is an old English word for a fetter, clamped to arms and wrists, and then for any gripping tool. Hence clam shell, a shell that grips tight. It is a useful word without exact definition: almost any bivalve may be called a clam if it does not have a special name of its own.
There are said to be over twenty thousand species of bivalve in the world, all of them probably edible, although the number of clam species that are commonly eaten is probably no more than fifty. They range in size up to the Giant clams of tropical reefs, which have shells weighing 250 kg (550 lb) and 10 kg (22 lb) of meat inside, enough to feed a large party. Clams vary greatly in flavour and toughness. Alexis Soyer is said to have claimed that clams the same size as oysters should be eaten raw, larger ones cooked. Such sweeping statements without reference to species or locality are valueless, but the praire of Brittany and Normandy is indeed very fine.
The recognition of unknown clams in strange markets is for shell collectors, hardly for cooks. About ten years ago, after being bewildered by fish markets in Normandy. Italy and Spain, all within the space of two months, I decided to start buying and identifying samples of clams in markets wherever I went. Very soon, I concluded that there are so many local differences, so many sizes, so many local names, and even so many scie
ntific names given to the same species, that clam collecting, taken seriously, would become a lifetime hobby. Nevertheless, there are certain basic facts about clams which the consumer needs to know thoroughly.
Clams very often live buried in sand or mud. Some are dug or ploughed up on beaches near the low tide mark, while others have to be dredged from under the water. Clams feed and breathe by drawing a current of water through their bodies; they filter food particles out of the stream of water. It is important to understand this because it explains why clams that have grown in dirty places can be infected with harmful organisms – disease germs like typhoid or even poisonous plankton (see poisoning). It also explains why clams will clean themselves of grit if they are left in clear water. Commercially dredged or farmed clams are kept for some days in tanks of clear seawater under ultra-violet light (which kills bacteria but not plankton) and are therefore sand-free and safe to eat.
Clams bought in markets from local fishermen need to be cleaned. First they should be well scrubbed and picked over for dead or damaged specimens – dead ones will gape open. Then they should be put, not too many together, in a wide shallow basin filled with clean seawater (if you are near the sea) and kept quietly in a cool place for a couple of days with frequent changes of seawater – if the clams die from lack of oxygen in the water, it will be worse than not bothering to wash them. If you are not near the sea, the clams should be put into cold water in which has been dissolved about 100 g (4 oz) of salt (preferably sea-salt) per 4 It (7 pt) of water. Clams will clean themselves in this, at least partially, if left quietly for 2-3 hours. They will live up to a week when kept cool and packed in seaweed.
Clams are eaten either cooked or raw. If cooked, they can be opened by heat, like mussels. Many types may benefit by being opened by hand before cooking, which should be short or the flesh will toughen. A clam which may take some time to steam open can be cooked in a minute under the grill if it has already been opened.
Clams are often more difficult to open raw than oysters. The best implement for the purpose is a short, thin-bladed, double-edged stainless steel knife. Insert it between the shells or drive the point in near the hinge, depending on the type of clam. Move the knife close to the uppermost shell, being careful not to puncture the animal’s body, and cut the two muscles – one at each end – which hold the valves together. Then pull the top shell off and free the animal from the bottom shell by cutting underneath it. If the clam is held flat, the juice may be preserved – or the job can be done over a bowl. As when opening oysters, you should wear some protection on the hand holding the clam; otherwise, if the knife slips, there can be blood all over the kitchen. A trick advocated by American friends is to put the clams in the freezer for a couple of hours before opening. After a short thawing, the clams are in no condition to resist the cook’s designs upon them. The treatment does not alter their quality.
With canning and freezing, clams now come from all over the world. They can be put into a freezer without any preparation other than cleaning and still eaten raw for up to two months afterwards. If kept longer, they are good only for cooking. In many cases, the commercial exploitation of clam beds by mechanical methods of digging (which are over efficient), have made formerly plentiful clams come to the verge of extinction. A good example is the New Zealand toheroa, which makes one of the world’s most delicious soups. Another now-scarce clam is the Pismo clam of California. In recent years, however, the farming of clams has gained momentum, and fine clams are now cultivated where they formerly did not exist. France is a pioneer in this business. Palourdes have long been tended near the estuary of the Loire, and American hard-shell clams were introduced into the mouth of the Charente at the time of World War I. Britons can feel pleased that since the 1940s the same type of clam (probably brought from America on liners using Southampton) has established itself in the Solent, in waters warmed by the coolers of the Fawley petroleum refinery. After the disastrous freeze in the winter of 1962-63, when so many oyster beds were ruined, American clams were taken from these waters and left to fatten and cleanse in the Newtown River on the Isle of Wight where oysters had previously been growing. These clams are hardier than oysters, and, with the lessons learned from bitter necessity, the cultivation of American hard-shell clams alongside oysters is now an established industry in Britain, although most are exported to France and Belgium, since the British (as suspicious of shellfish as they are of toadstools) are only just learning to eat them.
This is perhaps why, although the Americans have names for their clams, often taken from the indigenous Indian languages, there are no popular clam names in Britain, though there are a few in Ireland. Invented names like ‘carpet shell’ and ‘warty venus’ are not gastronomically inviting, and it would be better to use the French words as we do in so many culinary matters. France is lucky in having both an Atlantic and Mediterranean seaboard. The most important indigenous clams in France are the palourde, the clovisse and the praire. In Spain, also blessed with a northern and Mediterranean coast, a common snack is the almeja. These are much canned in northern Spain, and it is not always easy to know what kind you are eating, since almeja seems to cover many species. So also does the Italian word vongola. Spaghetti alia vongole must be one of the most internationally-known Italian dishes. Clams of all kinds are particularly fished and eaten around Naples and Venice. The following are the best known clams in Europe.
Palourde (Venerupis decussata). Carpet shell. French: palourde. Italian: vongola nera or vongola verace. Spanish: almeja Polourdes are often also called vongole napoletane (Neapolitan).This is the largest of the European ‘gastronomic’ clams, reaching 8 cm (3 in), and one of the best. Found both in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, it is cultivated in the sandy muds north and south of the Loire estuary, and is common in Brittany, both in Morbihan and on the north coast around Roscoff. They are also fished off the Gulf Stream warmed coasts of Southern Ireland (where they are called ruacan or kirkeen) and exported to France. In Britain, they are found only locally in warm waters. Palourdes are the classic clams for spaghetti con vongole, the sauce for which is made from small ones. These clams have tender meat and a fine flavour. They are eaten raw or cooked. Raw ones can have a bitter aftertaste, but they have many devotees. They are also superb stuffed with garlic butter, or with a herb butter containing shallots, tarragon and parsley.
Clovisse (Venerupis geogrophica, grey, and V. aurea, yellow.) French: clovisse and clovisse jaune. Italian: vongola grigia and vongola gialla. Spanish: amarguela and margarita. These two very similar species of clam are mainly from the Mediterranean (they are scarce in the Atlantic and not so tasty) and are commonly eaten in the South of France. They are fished all the year, but are best in summer and autumn when they are larger and fatter. These are common types of vongole used in Italy, but considered inferior to the vongola nero, and are usually referred to as vongola commune.
Praire (Venus verrucosa). Warty Venus. French: praire. Italian: tartufo di mare (sea truffle). Spanish: verigüeto. A very heavy concentrically ridged shell about 5 cm (2 in) wide which occurs both in the Mediterranean and Atlantic (e.g. Brittany coasts); it is common in Britain, though neglected as a food and with no popular English name. Elsewhere praires are regarded as delicious – usually eaten raw – and one of the more expensive bivalves; they are also cooked, with garlic butter and in other ways.
Venus gallina. French: galinette. Italian: poveracce, or similar, in Veneto and northern Adriatic, lupino, or similar, in Naples and the south. Spanish: chirla.
Smaller than Venus verrucosa, 3-4 cm (1% -1½ in), and much fished in the Mediterranean where it is one of the cheapest bivalves. Though available all year, it is most abundant in winter and spring. Not very well flavoured and rather tough, it is commonly used in soups and sauces. It is often referred to as vongola, sometimes arsella.
Wedge shell (Donax trunculus). French: olive de mer Italian: tellina Spanish: coquina. This bivalve is small, 3-4 cm (1¼-1½ in), and wedge shaped. lt i
s tender and the taste is fine and sweet. In Italy, it ranks with the vongola nera, and many Italians consider it the very finest for making soup, or to go into sauces for spaghetti and risotto. It is also delicious eaten raw, but, being so small, can only be a passa tempo, like sunflower or melon seeds. Telline are available all the year round in Mediterranean countries.
Smooth venus (Callisto chaine). French: verni, grosse palourde Italian: cappa liscia, issolon in the Veneto, fasulara in Naples. Spanish: savenna. This is a large, smooth clam, up to 12 cm (5 in), which will attract attention in Mediterranean markets by its beautiful appearance. Its meat is inclined to be tough.
In North America (in sharp contrast to Britain), clams are a popular food on both coasts; they are eagerly sought after both fresh and canned. In times past, they were a favourite food of the Indians, not only around the coasts but also inland where various freshwater clams were eaten. Most famous of the American clams are:
Hard-shell clam (Mercenaria mercenaria).