by Tom Stobart
Pulses should be very well cooked – pressure cookers are useful for this. Pulses may be found indigestible and windy but these effects may be lessened by a preliminary short cooking (with a pinch of bicarbonate of soda) and a thorough rinsing, followed by a new start with fresh water. Salt should never be added until the beans are cooked. Whether they are can usually he determined by blowing on a few of them; if they are cooked, the skins wrinkle. Certain spices, notably cumin, may be used in pulse dishes to counteract indigestibility. Peeled lentils and dais are more digestible than unpeeled ones.
Haricot Beans. Cook the beans without prior soaking for 6 minutes in a pressure cooker, start them in cold water with 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda to 450 g (1 lb) beans. Open the cooker, drain the beans and rinse them well under the tap. Start again with fresh water (and any flavourings called for in the recipe). Cook for 40 minutes or more (depending on the age of the beans).
[Pulses – French: plantes légumineuses German: Gemüsepflanzen, Hülsenfrucht Italian: plante leguminose Spanish: legumbres]
PUMMELO. See shaddock.
PUMPKIN. See marrow.
PURPLE GRANADILLA. See passion fruit.
PURSLANE, pussley, pigweed, or portulaca (Portulaca oleracea) is a spreading annual with fleshy leaves. It grows wild over most of southern Europe and in Asia, and is a common weed in the US, although it is said to have originated in India, where it is known as kulfa. lt is also popular in Arab countries, as bagli.
Wash it thoroughly, as it can be gritty. Tender shoots can be dressed with oil and vinegar to be eaten raw as a salad, as purslane was hundreds of years ago. The taste is mild, slightly sour, and the texture is mucilaginous, something like okra but less so. Although it also makes an excellent vegetable, it is now neglected, and most people would not even recognize it growing. With its fleshy leaves and stems, it superficially resembles samphire (although the taste is quite different); perhaps that is why it was often pickled. Purslane is easy to grow and freezes well. It would be worth another look.
Fattoush – an Arab salad
Put ½ cup of Arab (or other) bread, broken in pieces, into a bowl. Sprinkle it with sumac water (made by infusing some sumac seeds in water for a quarter of an hour or so and squeezing out the red juice) or some lemon juice. Add 3 chopped small (ridge) cucumbers, or a Cos lettuce torn to bits, a chopped green pepper, a chopped tomato, a small handful each of chopped parsley and mint, and purslane leaves. Add some chopped onion, a good sprinkling of salt, and season with ½ cup of good olive oil before mixing .Also add 2 cloves crushed garlic – the lazy way is to liquidize these in the oil before adding it. Adjust the seasoning with more salt and lemon juice as necessary.
[Purslane – French: pourpier German: Portulak Italian: portulaca parcellana Spanish: verdalaga]
PYROLIGNEOUS ACID, sometimes called liquid smoke, is made by the destructive distillation of wood. Sawdust is heated in an iron retort, and the vapours are caught and condensed. It consists of 6% acetic acid and small amounts of creosote, methyl alcohol and acetone (a solvent which is used in nail-polish remover and film cement).The yellowish liquid was used at one time as a pickling liquid, but today it appears mainly as an artificial smoke flavouring and also, in tiny amounts, in a wide range of unlikely products from butter and caramels to rum and ice cream. It is corrosive and poisonous except in dilute form.
q
QAWWRAMA. This is mutton preserved in its fat, much used in Lebanese cooking and interesting because it echoes products made in France with pig and goose. For qawwrama, sheep are fattened for killing at the end of November, in the last weeks, the women stuff food individually and by hand into the mouth of each sheep. The animals become so fat that they can scarcely move. After slaughter, the fat is cut from the carcass and rendered down in a large brass pan. Meanwhile, the lean meat is cut in pieces, pressed to remove much of the liquid (it would not keep with too much water in it), and finally fried in the mutton fat. It is seasoned with pepper and salt. Meat and fat are packed, scalding, into earthenware crocks and are sealed in with clay. These jars of qawwrama keep all winter. Qawwrama is used in stews, for stuffing vegetables, for frying eggs and for many other purposes. A Lebanese idea of a good breakfast is kishk (a soured mixture of wheat and milk which has been dried to a powder for storage – another local staple) mixed into a porridge with water and laced with onions and garlic fried in qawwrama. A good healthy dish to start the day
QUAHAUG or QUAHOG. Hard-shell *clam.
QUAIL (Coturnix coturnix) is the smallest European game bird, like a tiny partridge, and the only one that is migratory Quails breed in much of Europe and into Asia as far as China, but migrate southwards in winter. The quail is now a protected species in Britain. Quail are eaten fresh. Sometimes, in the past, cooks left the *trail in, as with woodcock, but it was more usual to draw them. Head and neck were also removed, and the wing ends and feet; then the birds were trussed and wrapped in a slice of bacon and a vine leaf for roasting.
Enormous numbers of quail were netted on migration as they crossed Italy, and the London market was supplied from there, but today they are diminished in numbers and quails are reared specially for the table. The Japanese have been doing this with their local species for a very long time, as well as keeping them for laying, as hard-boiled quails’ eggs are a delicacy. The Japanese quail is the species that is normally reared as it can be bred in small cages. The birds start to lay eggs when they are a mere 6 weeks old. As they can lay up to an egg a day all year and make very efficient use of their food, they are becoming increasingly important. There are native species of quail in most countries. US species include the bobwhite (Colinus virgintanus), which is easy to rear, although it does not thrive in the British climate, it has been introduced in a few places in England as well as in Germany, where another, larger US species, the California quail (Lophortyx californicus) has also been introduced.
[Quail – French: caille German: Wachtel Italian: quaglia Spanish: codorniz]
QUASSIA is a bitter tasting wood, originally from a small tropical South American tree (Quassia amara) but since the early 19th century more usually from a larger Caribbean tree, the Bitter ash (Pacrasma excelsa). Both are used as a source of bitters for tonic wines and aperitifs.
[Quassia – French: quassia German: Quassia Italian: quassia Spanish: cuasia]
QUATRE ÉPICES. A mixture of four spices used as a flavouring, particularly in French charcuterie. There is no standard mixture and the name is sometimes applied to *allspice, as well as to *nigella. Quatre épices can even be a mixture of more than four spices. There are many formulae for such mixtures, a few of which follow.
Percentages by weight
QUETSCH. See fruit brandy, plum.
QUIN. See scallop.
QUINCE (Cydonia vulgaris) is related to pear and apple. The fruit may be pear-shaped or apple-shaped, according to variety, and their colour is golden when ripe – possibly this is the original ‘golden apple’ of classical legend. If so, when Paris judged the beauty contest between Aphrodite, Athena and Hera, the prize must have been presented as a joke because a bite of a raw quince would surely have given even Aphrodite a sour expression. Or was she expected only to smell it? A ripe quince has a wonderful perfume. The quince comes from western Asia, from that exciting corner between the Black and Caspian seas where until recently there were virgin tracts of primeval forest. Wild quinces in Europe have probably escaped from cultivation, and there are a number of cultivated varieties – though comparatively few beside pears and apples. Aroma and quality depend upon the type, and this is reflected in the quince jams made in different places. Quince jam is reckoned a luxury in Britain, but it is not easy to get, and is not generally popular, especially with children. The fruit contains plenty of pectin and sets to a good jelly; the astringency is destroyed by cooking. A thick paste of quince purée boiled down with sugar until it can be set into a tough slab is a confection made in many places from the Middle East through Spain and Portugal t
o France, which has a famous version called cotignac. Quince paste may be good, but is often over-sweet and insipid, especially when filled out with cheaper apple pulp. In Spain, it is called carne de membrillo (quince meat) and is generally eaten with cheese, a habit that has spread to Latin America, where the quince forests of Uruguay are famous. The word marmalade comes from the Portuguese for quince – marmelo. Quinces may have been introduced to Britain in the mid 10th century by the English king, Edgar, during the 16th and 17th centuries hundreds of recipes for quince marmalade appeared in cook books. Most of these were for pastes and jellies which were equivalents of the Italian cotognata.
Quinces are cooked with meat in many countries; the custom possibly originated in Persia. There are even Persian dishes in which quinces are stuffed with meat mixtures. In Rumania, quinces are cooked with beef, veal or chicken and onion -the meat and quinces are usually first fried and then combined in a sort of stew, thickened a little with flour and made slightly sweet-sour with brown sugar or caramel and a dash of vinegar. In North Africa, especially in Morocco, stews (tagine) of lamb or chicken often contain quinces. Even in Britain, quince sauce was often served with partridge, although this custom has largely died out. Recipes for stuffed quinces, tagine and quince paste will be found in Claudia Roden’s A Book of Middle Eastern Food (Penguin) which includes also a fabulous way of preparing compote of quinces.
Quince Compote
Peel and core 1 kg (2 lb) of quinces. Cook the peel and cores with the juice of half a lemon, 250 g (9 oz) sugar and 400 ml (¾ pt) of water for half an hour. Meanwhile, slice the quinces and put them into a bowl (if you want them pale, cover them temporarily with lemon juice and water as they quickly discolour in air). Strain the syrup from the pan, squeezing out all the juices over the quinces and cook the quince slices in this flavoured syrup until they are tender. Check for sweetness and acidity Chill and eat with thick cream.
[Quince – French: coing German: Quitte Italian: cotogna Spanish: membrillo]
QUININE. Most famous as an early anti-malarial drug, this exceedingly bitter *alkaloid is extracted from various species of the South American Cinchona bush. It is used, very dilute, in Indian tonic water. Liquids containing quinine, as opposed to other bitter substances, may be recognized by their pale blue fluorescence.
[Quinine – French: quinine German: Chinin Italian: china, chinina, chinino Spanish: quinina]
r
RABBIT and HARE belong to the same family, Leporidae. A strong distinction is made between hares and rabbits in Britain: hares have red meat and rabbits have white. But when the English names are used in other countries, the original distinction becomes blurred. Are American jack rabbits and Snowshoe rabbits really hares, when they belong to the hare and not the rabbit genus? The important point is whether the flesh is dark or light, and hares and rabbits anywhere can be judged by this criterion and recipes selected accordingly.
Hares are easily distinguished from rabbits by their darker colour and longer, more powerful back legs. There are two, possibly three, species of hare in Europe. The Common or Brown hare (Lepus europaeus) is distributed right across Europe and through to eastern Asia. The Varying, Blue, Scottish or Alpine hare (Lepus timidus) – not the same species as the Varying hare of North America – is found in the Alps, Scotland, Ireland and Scandinavia; in snowy places, it turns white in winter. Compared to the Brown hare, it has a smaller body and shorter ears, but a larger head and longer legs. The Mediterranean hare (Lepus capensis) which is found in Spain, the Balearic Islands, Sardinia and Crete, is strongly coloured and a little smaller than the Brown hare, of which it might be a variety.
Young hares can be told from old ones because they do not have a widely spread cleft in their hare-lip and they have sharp claws and tender ears. Up to a year old, they are called leverets. Old hares can never be roasted, but must be jugged or stewed. Unless hares have been badly shot and therefore have to be eaten immediately before they stiffen, they need hanging by the hind legs for at least 3 days – 5 days is better, or 7-8 days if the hare is large and the weather is cool (older books say from 10 days to a fortnight) – without drawing. When the hare is drawn just before cooking, the blood, especially that trapped in the chest cavity, should be saved if it is to be used for thickening the sauce (this may give rather too strong a flavour for some tastes).The best part of a hare is the back; the hind legs come second. Shoulders and forelegs are usually stewed or used for soup. Hare is very often marinated in a mixture of olive oil and wine, flavoured with crushed juniper berries, thyme or mixed herbs. If it is to be roasted, it is usually *larded to prevent the flesh going dry.
In Britain, hare is a cheap meat, but in Europe it is expensive and likely to figure in rather grand recipes. In French regional cooking, there are many marvellous hare dishes ranging from the simple civet de lièvre Iandais to the more luxurious creations such as râble de lièvre à Ia crème (saddle of hare baked in cream). Germany has a version of jugged hare (Tippenhaas) and saddle of hare sauced with horseradish and red currant jelly (Hasenrücken mit Meerettich) or with cream (mit Sahne); the liver is sometimes cooked as a separate dish. Italy has many excellent hare dishes, including several way-out ones such as the fantastic Iepre in dolce e forte from Tuscany. This contains among its ingredients pine nuts, the candied peel of orange and citron, sultanas, chocolate, cavallucci (a sweetmeat from Siena which includes walnuts and aniseed), wine, sugar, garlic, rosemary, basil, celery, tomato, parsley, onion, carrot, sage, bay leaves, oil and vinegar. It is one of the Italian sweet-sour (agrodolce) dishes of ancient origin.
The most famous British hare dish is jugged hare, which is traditionally cooked in a pot that stands in water (but today more usually in the oven) and is lengthily simmered with port or burgundy and gravy.
Jugged Hare
Cut the hare into pieces and brown them lightly in butter or bacon fat. Put them into a stoneware jar and pour in a large glass of red wine – port or burgundy. Turn the pieces and leave it while making a forcemeat. This consists of 6 heaped tablespoons of fresh breadcrumbs, the grated rind of a lemon, a small handful of parsley finely chopped, ½ teaspoon mixed thyme and marjoram, plus seasoning of salt, pepper and nutmeg. To this, add a tablespoon of butter or some suet, and the yolk of 1-2 eggs for binding.
When the forcemeat has been made, cut 450 g (1 lb) of steak into thin slices, and spread each with a little of the forcemeat. Roll and tie these steak olives, brown them in butter and add to the pot with a very finely-chopped onion and some gravy Cover the jar closely and stand it up to the neck in boiling water. Keep the water boiling for 1½-2 hours, depending on the age of the hare. Ten minutes before serving, make the rest of the forecemeat into balls, fry them and add them to the pot. Adjust the seasoning, remove the string from the steak olives and serve the dish garnished with triangles of bread fried in butter and accompanied by red currant jelly. The gravy should be naturally thick, but if it needs thickening, do so with the blood (mixed with a teaspoon of vinegar to prevent curdling) or a little arrowroot mixed with butter. The steak can be omitted, but is a usual part of jugged hare, at least in the North of England.
Rabbits. The European rabbit (Oryctolagus caniculus) is a native of south-west Europe which has been introduced into many parts of the world, including Britain. Before myxomatosis was let loose, rabbits were so plentiful that they could hardly be given away; they kept many unemployed miners alive during the hungry ‘thirties, when it was not difficult for a good shot to kill thirty or more rabbits in an hour, in places they swarmed like vermin. Now rabbit has become more costly than chicken and frozen rabbit is imported into Britain from China. Wild rabbits, if they were young and particularly if they had fed on bark, were regarded as superior in flavour to domestic rabbits; a nest of really young ones made a fine brawn.
Wild rabbits are not found in the coldest parts of Europe – in the north or on high mountains – but are regularly eaten everywhere else. The weight of a fully grown rabbit undressed may reach 2 kg
(4½ lb), but is normally less. Rabbits can live up to 13 years, though 5-6 is more usual. In young rabbits, the claws are sharp and smooth, the coat soft, and the ears easily torn. In old rabbits, the claws are long and rough, the ears are tough and the coat may be turning grey. Unlike hares, rabbits are not hung – they ought not to have been killed more than a couple of days, and are best when still stiff. If kept too long, rabbit meat smells, and the flesh goes slimy and slightly blue.
To skin a rabbit, cut round the first joint of each hind leg (or chop off).lf the rabbit has not been already paunched, make an incision in the skin of each hind leg and slit back as far as the tail, then insert the hand between the skin and flesh and free the skin right over the back. (If the rabbit has been paunched, the belly wall and skin must be separated by pulling them apart, and then the procedure is the same.) The skin can be pulled off each leg, like turning a glove inside-out, the skin pulled forward and the front legs freed in the same way. With a little help from a knife, the skin can be pulled forward over the head, but some lazy people just chop the head off as it contains little meat. The rabbit now is ready to be gutted (leaving only the kidneys).The green gall bladder must be carefully cut from the liver, and the liver and heart saved. Wash the rabbit and giblets well and dry them. Rabbit is sometimes soaked for an hour in slightly salted water before cooking. Table breeds of domestic rabbit can grow to a huge size, but remain tender and white. Young rabbits of the giant breeds weigh 2 kg (4½ lb) – as much as a large wild rabbit – when only 8 weeks old, and reach 4 kg (9 lb) at 6 months. A dressed rabbit is not much over 60% of its live weight (a hare 75%).
As rabbits used to be so cheap and common, there are innumerable simple recipes for cooking them, but they seem not to have merited very royal treatment. Rabbits with champagne, truffles and cream will no doubt come now that they are expensive. Meanwhile there are fine recipes of peasant origin including the Italian coniglio alla sanremese (rabbit ‘roasted’ brown in an earthenware pan with wine, onion, thyme, rosemary, bay, pounded walnuts and tiny Ligurian black olives) or the Spanish conejo a Ia ampurdanesa.