by James Steen
The mincer looked a bit like a large version of the mouli, the puréeing utensil often to be found in Italian and French kitchens, with a clamp to attach the machine to a table or counter. Like a mouli, it had a handle to turn and grind the meat. In fact, the machines usually had a wheel of sharp blades so did more of a chop than a grind, and the new invention frequently came with components for stuffing sausages.
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The creation of the name ‘shepherd’s pie’ leads to confusion. As shepherd’s pie, the name, originates at the same time as the mincing machines, it suggests that shepherd’s pie should be made with minced meat. And The Oxford Companion to Food does indeed define it as ‘a savoury dish of minced meat’.
However, the finest shepherd’s pie – the tastiest version – is made from roasted shoulder of lamb. Once roasted, the meat is ‘pulled’ from the bone, sliced into thick chunks and used in the pie. It is a dish of great flavours and succulence, which minced lamb cannot achieve. In other words, we are better off, I reckon, sticking with the folklore: that the pie was made from the meat of the Sunday roast. If you have not had shepherd’s pie made with the meat of shoulder of lamb, then it is worth making it at home, if only just the once.
The roasting of shoulder of lamb is the easiest thing in the world.
Do not worry about weighing it or fussing with the calculation of times. Begin, simply, by scoring the fat lightly with a sharp knife. This will render the fat, allowing it to release and diminish during cooking.
Pour a tablespoon of olive oil into a roasting tin, and toss onto the oil a couple of pinches of sea salt. Place the lamb on the oil, skin-side up. You do not turn it during cooking.
Put the lamb in an oven preheated to 170˚C. After 15 minutes reduce the heat to 150˚C and pour into the tin 150 millilitres of cold water. This will create steam, keeping the meat succulent, and help to make the gravy. Cook for a total of four hours. Top up the water a couple of times, as it evaporates. Add a few carrots, whole, to the pan in the final hour.
Should you wish to make shepherd’s pie:
Remove the roasted lamb from its shoulder. Cut the meat into quite large, thick pieces, about the length of your little finger. Put the lamb pieces into a casserole dish.
Chop up the carrots and add them, along with onion and garlic, both very finely sliced.
Use the gravy or stock (from the roasting tin) in the shepherd’s pie. First, allow the gravy to cool and go cold. Second, use a spoon to scrape away the layer of fat which settles on top of the gravy. Discard the fat and pour the gravy into the casserole, over the meat. Add a little water, if necessary.
Season this delicious hotchpotch with salt and pepper to your taste. Top it with plenty of creamy, buttery mashed potato and place the pie in an oven preheated to 170˚C. Wonderful smells will spread through your home, and when the mashed potato is browned to your liking the pie is ready to serve.
Shepherd’s pie made with lamb mince is much improved when the mash is covered with a layer of cheddar cheese, which melts, bubbles and browns during cooking.
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The earliest shepherd’s pie – but by another name – probably originates in Scotland or the north of England where, no matter how un-tired you felt, it would be impossible to count the sheep because such a large number of them live there. But we do know for sure that the pie can only have been created after the arrival in Britain – and the British acceptance – of potatoes.
They were introduced to Britain in the 1590s. But not eaten.
The theory, as taught in schools, that Sir Walter Raleigh brought us potatoes when he returned from a voyage to America, is reckoned to be nonsense. What’s more, Raleigh’s name was not linked to the potato introduction until the 1800s.
It is more likely that potatoes came to us from Spain. The Spanish had discovered the potato in 1532, during their conquest of Peru; potatoes were part of the staple diet for the Incas. In fact, the Incas were the first to mash it: they dried the potatoes, mashed them and stored the dehydrated mash. Remarkably, the dried out pulp lasted for up to ten years, ensuring the tribes would never go hungry should their crops be ruined.
In Britain, as in much of Europe, the potato was generally regarded as poisonous. So for about two centuries the potato was in Britain, but was eaten mostly by experimental gardeners and pigs, fed to them (the pigs, that is) as fodder.
Authors of cookery books did not consider the potato to be food, and so did not mention it often. Even in the 1760s, the ever-dependable, pioneering Elizabeth Raffald was not particularly enamoured with the potato. In The Experienced English Housekeeper she found room for just one recipe, ‘to scollop potatoes’. Or mash, as we know it, but browned and presented in scallop shells …
Boil your potatoes, then beat them fine with good cream, a lump of butter and salt, put them into scollop shells, make them smooth on top, score them with a knife, lay thin slices of butter on top of them, put them in a Dutch oven to brown before the fire. Three shells is enough for a dish.
It is best to start the potatoes on a boil, and reduce to a simmer. Maris Piper, or the Desirée variety, are good mashers.
We know that by the 1700s the stew called ‘hotchpot’ existed, and Sir Kenelm Digby has a recipe for it in The Closet Opened (1677). Hotchpot may derive from the hot pot that is used for the dish, or it refers to the hotchpotch or wide assortment of ingredients. Digby’s recipe requires brisket of beef, mutton and veal, as well as cabbage, onions and carrot, and – a nice touch – a few apples (Pippins) for flavour and (as they cook) to thicken the sauce. However, the recipe does not have potatoes because they were deemed poisonous and so not even considered. Later on, the hotchpot from a county in the north-east of England was a casserole of neck of lamb, topped not with mash but with slices of potato. A bit like shepherd’s pie, but what we know as Lancashire Hot Pot. That’s ‘hot’ as in an abbreviation of hotchpot, or hot because the pot was hot.
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Then, in the late 1700s, the history of the potato in Britain took a dramatic turn.
There was a strong push by the government to promote the tuber, and rid it, once and for all, of the dreaded slurs that it was poisonous. This promotion saw the publication, in 1795, of The Board of Agriculture’s four-page pamphlet entitled, Hints Respecting the Culture of Potatoes, and the Uses to which they are Applicable. It was written by Sir John Sinclair, head of the agriculture board.
Interestingly, 1795 was also the year of the bread riots – violent disorders in Britain over the scarcity of provisions, mostly wheat and bread.
The lack of food was due to two reasons; first, terrible weather, including extensive floods which killed crops and livestock; second, the war against France, which restricted the importation of food. By then Britain existed on a wheat-based diet, rather than the oats, rye or barley of earlier years. The price of flour and bread shot up, and became unaffordable to the masses. A four-pound loaf of bread could cost a quarter of a labourer’s weekly wages, if he could even find the bread.
So if we wonder why potatoes entered our diet in a sudden way, then perhaps the bread riots played, inadvertently, an important role. You see, as the nation struggled against famine, Sir John’s pamphlet not only gave directions for planting and harvesting potatoes, but also suggested a recipe for ‘excellent’ potato bread. Making bread with potatoes requires far less flour than, say, a white loaf. If more people ate potatoes, less bread would need to be consumed and this would bring down the price. In short, here was a bread substitute, and anyone could grow it.
The pamphlet was despatched to the clergy, around the time the nation was recovering from the coldest January on record. With more than a hint of understandable desperation, Sir John asked for clergymen to ‘encourage, as much as they can, the farmers and cottagers to plant potatoes, in order that the kingdom may experience no scarcity if the next harvest should prove either very late, or not sufficiently productive in bread corn’.
One clergyman who would have been on Sir
John’s side was Reverend James Woodforde. He was the man credited with the first mention in print of cottage pye. In his brilliant journal, Diary of A Country Parson, he constantly mentions his meals – ‘dinner to-day rost loin of veal … dinner to-day breast of veal, rosted …’ and so on – and his entry for 29 August 1791, announces: ‘Dinner to-day. Cottage pye and rost beef.’ He was not fussed about the poisonous claims and, as was customary, the dish would have been lined with mashed potato, as well as topped with it. Remember also, this was before the days of the mincing (or chopping) machine. To mince (deriving from the Old French mincier) was to cut into small pieces, as opposed to the modern-day practice of using a machine to create strands of meat.
Oh, to have been a guest at the parson’s table. One of Woodforde’s entries notes that instead of drinking a glass of wine and another of port, he ‘drank 7 or 8 wine glasses and it seemed to do me much good, being better for it’.
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The bread rioters, meanwhile, received harsh penalties. They stole flour, and when caught, were likely to be imprisoned for six months. There behind bars, at least, they were fed: meals in jail included boiled beef – with potatoes. In Sussex, two men were found to have helped loot a flour mill. They were executed by firing squad as they knelt on their flimsy coffins. Others received the whip; sometimes 300 lashes. Others were hanged or transported to Australia, not a fate worse than starvation.
Decades later, the potato continued to have a tough fight to win us over. In 1836, G.H. Law, Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells, was campaigning for the humble potato. But he was castigated by The Gentleman’s Magazine. ‘Potatoes,’ declared the publication, ‘are a very uncertain crop and keep through the winter very badly. We are not, if we are wise, to trust the potato, and in particular, this potato system superseding wheaten food is, in itself, most objectionable.’
And with a whiff of Victorian snobbery, the magazine addressed its hopes for the future: ‘Instead of increasing it, we hope soon to see the potato form only a pleasing variety in the dinner of an Irish peasant; and never to be found but with pork in an English cottage.’
Not to worry. The potato was by now a food of both the upper and working classes, working its way to become the most popular 19th-century street food, in baked, roasted or fried form. In Liverpool, the lamb or beef stew known as scouse, originally introduced to the city’s people by visiting Scandinavian sailors, would now incorporate chunks of potatoes, their starch content thickening the sauce so, again, no need for flour. Meanwhile, the Irish stew also called for potatoes now that they were acceptable.
Cookery books eschewed the versatility of this tuber. Eliza Acton’s Modern Cookery for Private Families of 1845 featured four recipes alone for boiling potatoes, as well as French-inspired dishes; potatoes boulette, potatoes à la crème (in a Béchamel sauce), potatoes rissoles, and potatoes maître d’hôtel. But while she gave recipes for pies of chicken, pigeon, beefsteak and mutton, she had nothing to say of a pie with potato on its top, such as shepherd’s pie.
In Acadia, the French colony in what would become Canada, they were eating pâté à la rapure, or grated pie, which today is commonly known as rappie pie. This dish contains ‘minced’ cooked meat – it could be chicken or pork or include shellfish such as mussels; there are no strict rules here. The potato is not mashed, but grated and then squeezed in a cloth to remove the excess potato water. The starch was used to do the pioneers’ laundry.
Meanwhile, in France, they had hachis Parmentier, more like the British cottage pie and made with hachi – chopped – beef. It takes its name, along with so many other French potato dishes, from Antoine-Augustin Parmentier. He is an intriguing character from the 18th century, who did in France what Sir John Sinclair tried to do in Britain. And Parmentier also succeeded.
During the Seven Years’ War, he had been captured by the Prussians and found himself holed up in prison. Now, as we have seen from the bread riots earlier, prisons were happy to serve potatoes even if others were not. Day after day, meal after meal, Parmentier was fed a diet of potatoes by his captors. You might think he would be sick of them when he was finally released but, no, he felt he had eaten extraordinarily well and discovered a fantastic new food. He became obsessed with the potato.
Royally connected, he encouraged Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette to eat them. The latter garnished her hair with purple flowers from the potato plant. Voilà! The potato became fashionable and was embraced by the French, a kiss on each cheek. But it came back to haunt the royal couple. The French Revolution – partly attributed to the shortage of bread which led to starvation – owes much to potatoes, as they helped to sustain the revolutionaries during their uprising.
BAK-KUT-TEH
Literally ‘meat/pork bone tea’, but tea is not among the ingredients. Pork rib and Asian spices simmered gently in a nutritious broth which is widely supped in South-east Asia.
Unquestionably this is a dish with Chinese influences, but today’s version was created in Malaysia. Or was it Singapore? Both claim it’s theirs, and fiercely so.
In November 2008, Malaysia set out, with some style, to prove a point. Singaporeans look away now. A bak-kut-teh carnival, lasting two days, took place in Malaysia’s royal city of Klang. The highlight of the event was the creation of the world’s largest bak-kut-teh.
Chefs from five of the city’s bak-kut-teh restaurants gathered at a giant bowl – somewhere in between the size of a Jacuzzi and plunge pool – a metre high and the width of a tall man. The chefs then concocted the broth, the ingredients of which included 500 kilograms of pork, equivalent to five fat, ready-for-slaughter pigs. There were 50 grams of herbs and 450 litres of broth. The message was clear: Klang was the birthplace of bak-kut-teh, and this massive one was made to ‘promote this cultural treasure of Klang’.
Soon afterwards Malaysia’s tourism minister Dr Ng Yen Yen caused a ripple of irritation when she accused neighbouring countries of ‘hijacking’ Malaysia’s national dishes. These dishes were, she said, bak-kut-teh, as well as chicken crab and chicken rice. Singaporeans, however, will tell you that these three are their national dishes.
The broth, it seems, was introduced to what was then Malaya in the 1930s or 40s, and by a man called Lee Boon Teh, an immigrant from China’s Fujian who settled in Klang. He was a doctor, or sinseh, skilled in the arts of herbalism and acupuncture.
Here in Klang, Teh cooked bak-kut (from the Hokkien dialect) with its wondrous healing powers and fragrant scents. He became associated with the dish, so much so that his name was added to its name, out of respect for the creator. That is how we arrive at the Hokkien version of bak-kut-teh, where teh means Teh, and that means tea … but there is none.
There is certainly a physician’s touch to the dish. The broth has medicinal qualities, with cloves, cinnamon, fennel, garlic and star anise. If handy, these can also be added: angelica root, Sichuan lovage rhizome and wolfberry fruit. Mushrooms, such as shitake, and tofu are often incorporated too. Dark soy sauce is splashed in at the beginning and more, if needed, at the last minute. Served in ceramic bowls with a side bowl of noodles or white rice, it can be breakfast, lunch or dinner. The chicken equivalent is chik-kut-teh.
Singapore’s version, sold on virtually every street, is spicier (with chilli and crushed peppercorns) and lighter in colour (there is little or no dark soy sauce). It also surfaced in the 1940s, stemming, it is said, from immigrants who arrived from the Chaozhou (also known as Teochew) region of China.
THE FRY-UP
A triumph of pork, with eggs, toast and condiments, and little space left on the plate. Usually eaten at breakfast-time.
‘Breakfast first, business next.’ So wrote William Makepeace Thackeray, the 19th-century novelist and satirist. He was thinking not of the namby-pamby Continental meal of cold croissants dipped in hot chocolate, but of the hearty and enormous British breakfast of fried eggs and fried or grilled meats, along with buttered toast smothered in marmalade. (He was, by the way, a committed gour
met and also wrote that ‘dinner is for eating and not for talking’.)
At the time of Thackeray, breakfast was a relatively new affair. Go back to the medieval times and breakfast, if eaten, was only a hunk of bread. In the early 1700s, it was customary to have just two meals a day, neither of them breakfast. The first was dinner, which for the middle classes took place at about noon, followed by supper in the early evening, but before daylight faded. However, the elite upper classes had more time on their hands, and cheerfully could afford to eat for long hours by candlelight. They ate their ‘dinner’ in the middle of the afternoon and had a lighter meal, supper, at night-time.
Thus we have the class-division of our meals: what was known as dinner – the main meal of the day – was served by housewives to their husbands who returned from work at six-ish. The earlier meal, very much one for the ladies at home, was now lunch. And supper for the middle and working classes became non-existent because they were not hungry. So in terms of etiquette, it is probably correct to call the final meal supper, but do not lose sleep over it.
Breakfast became popular in the 1700s, but it was modest compared with today’s fry-up, and consisted of coffee or tea or chocolate (which was introduced to Britain in the late 1600s, and was drunk and not eaten), as well as a whig (bread roll), or toast or cake. If breakfast seemed meagre to the British, it did not matter as there was ample time to fill up later in the day on puddings, puddings and more puddings; savoury and sweet. If you had money.
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The wholesome cooked breakfast became popular in Victorian times, and the British queen was a fan. Kate Hubbard, author of Serving Victoria: Life in the Royal Household, says Queen Victoria ate breakfast in a private dining room close to her bedroom in Buckingham Palace and, ‘She tended to have a very protein-rich breakfast: tongue, fowl, kidneys maybe, bacon and eggs, that kind of thing.’ Hubbard adds that Victoria was a gobbler, greedy and ate with speed: ‘She liked her dinners to last no more than half an hour. Guests would quite often find their plates whisked away while they were still eating because once she had finished, all the plates were removed.’