by James Steen
It was during this period that Isabella Beeton saw the publication, in 1861, of her fantastic, phenomenal best-seller The Book of Household Management. Breakfast was addressed by Beeton in a serious manner, with plenty of recipes which gave heartiness to the morning meal.
Beeton firmly instructed the cook of the house, in houses that could afford cooks, to rise early and begin her daily chores by setting the dough for the breakfast rolls. After sweeping and dusting the kitchen, ‘the breakfast bell will most likely summon her to the parlour to “bring in” the breakfast’. The breakfast room and dining room were separate rooms within the house. The butler’s duty was to bring in the breakfast ‘eatables’ and, assisted by the footman, wait upon the family during the meal. The job of the footman, meanwhile, was to clear the table, sweep up the crumbs (doubtless muttering under his breath about the messy master and mistress), clean the hearth and prepare a new fire. The maid-of-all-work was lumbered with the washing up, cleaning the kitchen and emptying the slops. Nice. (No wonder Beeton suggested the mistress took on some of the dusting as ‘the maid-of-all-work’s hands are not always in a condition to handle delicate ornaments’.)
So what did they eat for breakfast?
Admittedly many of Beeton’s breakfast dishes, such as collared pig’s face – the ingredients begin ‘1 pig’s face …’ – are no longer on our tables in the morning. Her breakfast recommendation for potted veal, made with minced veal, ham, mace, cayenne pepper and butter, is not the sort of dish which you would find at a greasy spoon cafe in the 21st century.
The same goes for Beeton’s breakfast suggestions of potted hare, potted ham, broiled pheasant (‘serve with a mushroom sauce, sauce piquant, or brown gravy in which a few game-bones and trimmings have been stewed’) or collared beef, which for her was ‘a very nice addition to the breakfast-table’, as was potato bread when buttered and toasted. Anchovy paste was a favourite spread for toast, and anchovy butter features as a recipe for breakfast. Plain butter, she suggested, should be put in an ornamental dish, with a little water at the bottom, ‘should the weather be very warm’. Savoury beef tea also receives the breakfast thumbs-up from Beeton.
However, many other recipes are familiar. There are ‘broiled’ (grilled) rashers of bacon (‘the streaked part of the thick flank is generally the most esteemed’) and broiled kidneys, as well as broiled mushrooms, piqued with a few drops of lemon juice.
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On mushrooms, and as an aside, I recall chatting to Owen Hodgson, who briefly was a chef in the kitchens of Buckingham Palace in the early 90s. He told me: ‘When we cooked The Queen’s mushrooms we always added a smidgen of Marmite.’ How clever! Mushrooms and Marmite are both rich in umami, that taste sensation found in comfort foods. This means the Queen’s mushrooms were a delicious abundance of umami-ness.
Beeton gives a recipe for ham omelette, ‘a delicious breakfast dish’. For boiled eggs, she says: ‘3 ¼ to 4 minutes will be ample time to set the white nicely’.
Her advice for storing eggs for two or three months goes like this: place the eggs in a (cabbage) net and suspend the net into a large pan of boiling water; leave the eggs in the boiling water for twenty seconds; pack them away in sawdust. Alternatively, smear them in butter or ‘sweet oil’ and store them in sawdust; ‘the eggs should not be allowed to touch each other’.
Aside from these dishes for ‘the comfortable meal called breakfast’, she informs the reader of other dishes, ‘broiled fish such as mackerel, whiting, herrings, dried haddock etc, mutton chops and rump-steaks, sausages, muffins …’ Oh, ‘and in the summer, and when they are obtainable, always have a vase of freshly-cut flowers on the breakfast-table’.
One piece of Beeton advice that is debatable; before frying sausages, she writes: ‘Prick the sausages with a fork (this prevents them from bursting).’ Pricking a sausage should never be done. It causes the fat to escape to the pan. Flavour and succulence will be lost. Instead, start off the sausage on a medium-high heat for just a minute, before reducing the heat to low-medium, low enough to stop the skin bursting.
Beeton, of course, did not invent these dishes, but she encouraged and helped the nation to think of breakfast as an essential meal; and an enjoyable one that would set you up for the day, providing you had the time and the money to buy the ingredients, or lived on a farm.
CHAIRO
Bolivia’s wholesome soup of beef or lamb and ‘freeze-dried’ potatoes.
The Bolivians (producers of cacao for chocolate) are sweet toothed and they like their pastries. Inspired, no doubt, by the Spanish conquistadors of the 16th century, they enjoy a siesta after a three-course lunch and, come late afternoon, they sip black tea and nibble cakes and biscuits.
They also like suckling pig and guinea pig, and adore the salteña, which at first glance is almost a replica of the Cornish pasty; filled with meat and vegetables, and wrapped in pastry which is crimped along the top, or sometimes the side. Unlike the pasty, it contains hard-boiled egg, cumin and, to make it spicy, ground red pepper.
The dish is not particularly old. It is credited to Juana Manuela Gorriti, the 19th-century writer, feminist and brave freedom fighter. Born in Salta, in neighbouring Argentina, she and her family decamped to Bolivia when the Argentinian dictator, the brutal Juan Manuel de Rosas, started stealing land from his subjects. Although she was not a professional cook, her pies were instantly popular with the Bolivians, and soon word spread. They became known as the empanada salteña: the pie of the woman from Salta.
Chairo is a soupy stew which dates back much further, and is eaten by the people of Aymara, a region stretching across the Andes and incorporating not only Bolivia but also Chile and Peru. Chairo is the Aymara word for soup. The centre of the region is the city of El Mato, not far from Bolivia’s capital La Paz. Often it is called chairo paceño, soup of La Paz.
One large pot is required for the cooking of chairo. As well as the meat, the ingredients for this dish include chuño, which is an Aymaran invention. It is a potato which is laid on the ground so that it can freeze in the night; the following day it is left in the sun, and stamped on to press out the moisture. This process continues for a few days, after which the potato is washed and then dried to create ‘white chuño’. It is an ancient technique, at least 1,000 years old, and sometimes chuño is described as freeze-dried potato, which makes it sound quite a modern food.
Chalona is another ingredient: a sun-dried meat, of which the technique is even more ancient, possibly dating back to Neanderthal man who was searching for ways to preserve his food. Take the meat and place it in the sun. Hey presto! It is dried and will last for ages. For centuries chalona has been made with lamb, but only because the Spaniards introduced sheep to Bolivia. Before that, the Aymarans and Incas and their predecessors dried other meats, and perhaps the flesh of birds.
It is easy to make chairo. The chuño is soaked overnight before being peeled, and washed some more. The beef and chalona are added to the pot of water and left to simmer; and then the other ingredients are added, including the chuño, beans, onion, and, perhaps, squash, red (bell) pepper and carrots. Herbs of your choice can be added, as well as the essential Aymaran herbs, huacatay (pronounced wak-a-tie), which has a minty flavour, and quilquiña, which tastes a bit like coriander, and indeed coriander can be substituted.
SPAGHETTI (OR SPAGHETTONI) ALLA CARBONARA
A classic Italian pasta dish. Cheap, quick, easy to make and even easier to eat.
This simple and inexpensive pasta dish has a name which has aroused immense intrigue. There are a number of theories of how it came to be known.
The spaghetti part of the name is fine. We all know what that is. The word itself derives from spago, from the Italian for string or cord, which stems from spacus, the Latin for twine. The pasta, of course, is like string, cord or twine. Alla Carbonara means in the style of the coal-worker or maker of wood charcoal. This gives us charcoal-maker’s string. Easy to see why the dish has yet to appear on a restaurant
menu under its English translation.
The mystery centres on the coal-worker or workers. Who the devil were they? And how and why on earth could or would they have lent their name to this dish?
One theory is that the coal-workers who slaved away in the Apennine Mountains ended their day with this dish, which was cooked on a fire made from charcoal. This theory is widely disbelieved.
Another story is that the dish was created during the Second World War. American troops in Italy had rations of eggs and bacon and these ingredients, once in the hands of the local chefs, were added to pasta to become spaghetti alla carbonara. This is not credible because the dish was eaten before the war.
There is also the claim that it takes its name from the black pepper ground onto the top of the dish, pepper resembling coal. This is also deemed to be ridiculous.
Jeremy Parzan used his website, Do Bianchi, to share his theory:
While I have no solid evidence of this, my philological intuition leads me to believe that the innovation of carbonara was the inclusion of cured pork. To my knowledge, no gastronomer has made the connection between carbonara and carbonata, a term widely used in Renaissance Italy to denote a type of salt-cured and smoked pork.
Parzan adds: ‘I’d like to propose that the designation carbonara could have been inspired by the use of salt-cured pork that had been smoked sotto carboni (by means of [wood] charcoal or embers).’
Or, moving on, it is said to be named after the groups of 19th-century secret revolutionary societies known as the Carbonari (Italian for ‘charcoal makers’ or ‘burners’), either as a tribute to them or created by them because they were poor and had little more than pasta, cheese and pancetta, and with those humble ingredients rustled up this magnificent dish.
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My own theory emanates from the traditions of the professional kitchens before the introduction of modern ovens. In the old days, and up until, say, the early 1950s, ovens in restaurants were fired by wood and charcoal.
The kitchen brigade was run by a head chef. The French ‘regimental’ or Escoffier system of a kitchen brigade is clever and still in use: beneath the head chef there is the sous chef, and then chefs de partie – chefs who are in charge of sections, ranging from Sauce–Meat, Fish, Pastry and, depending on the restaurants, sections could include Cold Starters and Hot Starters. Commis chefs are the assistants to the chefs de partie.
The phrase chef-patron or chef-proprietor is in frequent use these days as many chefs either own or have a sizeable stake in the restaurant. This is a relatively new phenomenon, skilfully exemplified, and perhaps pioneered, in the early 1920s by the great Fernand Point – the so-called ‘father of modern gastronomy’ who drank a magnum of champagne every day. His restaurant La Pyramide in Vienne, near Lyon, was regarded as the finest in France. Those who trained with Point included the mighty Paul Bocuse, another to encourage the rise of the chef-patron.
Now, in Italy, they might not have followed necessarily this regimental system in professional kitchens. Nevertheless, the Italian head chef had other chefs who worked beneath him, and every kitchen – no matter which country it is in – has always required someone to do the washing up. In large kitchens this is the job of the kitchen porter or KP.
And all large kitchens required an apprentice. He would be a young lad (the girls helped at home) at the beginning of his culinary career. In return for a meagre wage, he worked long hours, slaving away as the kitchen dogsbody and learning through observation and gradual experience.
Depending on the size of the kitchen, the apprentice moved from section to section, a day here, a day there, helping out with menial tasks. At the Hotel St George in Harrogate, Yorkshire, fifteen-year-old Marco Pierre White’s duties as an apprentice included running to the bookies to place bets for the chefs.
Jacques Pépin recounts his days as an apprentice in his memoir, appropriately enough entitled The Apprentice. Pépin’s three-year apprenticeship began in 1949 at Le Grand Hotel de L’Europe, in Bourg-en-Bresse. His working day began at 8.30am and his first job was to start up the great big oven which was known, in his kitchen, as Le Piano. ‘A young apprentice might never be permitted near it during service, but God help him if he failed to light proper fires in it,’ writes Pépin, who adds that these repercussions did not make this his favourite job.
He was shown by his predecessor – the apprentice until Pépin’s arrival – how to get the fires going. ‘He let me watch while he lit paper, then wood, and finally lumps of coal in one firebox. When the blaze was roaring, he shovelled glowing coals into the next firebox and repeated the process until Le Piano was ready for Chef and the commis.’
So, I wonder, was this common fire-lighting role of the apprentice the inspiration behind spaghetti alla carbonara? Was this dish named not after the maker of wood or charcoal, but rather the provider of wood or charcoal – in other words, the young lad who kept the fires burning in the kitchen?
Of course, the stove’s fire needed constant maintenance. You had to keep an eye on it, top it up, stoke it and feed it. Left alone, it might die down, lose its heat and fade. The kitchen brigade found time to eat a meal in between lunch and evening service, but the apprentice was probably the one lumbered with having only a quick bite to eat in the kitchen while he watched the oven. Perhaps the apprentice had spaghetti alla carbonara by the stove, while his superiors sat in the dining room. Or maybe it was the first dish that was made by an apprentice – made correctly and the apprentice progressed up the kitchen ladder.
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Although the origins of the dish are unknown – as is the recipe for the original version – many Italians still claim there is an authentic way of making it. Mushrooms, the Italians insist, non deve mai essere in carbonara (must never be in carbonara). The Italians who opened restaurants in London in the 1960s made for their guests a carbonara with bacon and cream (or a combination of milk and cream). This is considered sacrilege. British bacon is a no-no, and the addition of cream in carbonara horrifies Italians in Italy.
Chef Francesco Mazzei (see: Pizza) says: ‘No cream, no pancetta. Simple as that. No one can rewrite a beautiful poem. Likewise, this dish cannot be changed. Carbonara is all about purity.’ The authentic version, says Mazzei and other renowned chefs, is made with the Italian ham, guanciale, and the cheese, Pecorino Romano. Guanciale comes from the cheek of the pig, guancia being Italian for cheek.
The pasta, they say, should only ever be spaghetti or – even better – spaghettoni. Spaghettoni is thick spaghetti, and that thickness is just right for the coating of the delicious sauce. Just before serving, egg yolks are added to the hot dish; once stirred in, a creamy richness coats the pasta, the fork, the palate, and – if you happen to drop any food – your shirt and trousers, dress, blouse and skirt.
Mazzei says:
‘Sweat the guanciale in very good extra virgin olive oil until it is nice and golden. Take it out of the pan. Meanwhile, cook the pasta al dente. Take some of the pasta water and add it to the guanciale pan, and then add the pasta – you almost want to feed the pasta with the flavours, and the pasta will release its own starch creating a creamy emulsion with the water and fat.
‘When the pasta is cooked, remove the pan from the stove, add Pecorino Romano, egg yolks and a lot of black pepper and give it a stir. It will be lovely and creamy – so there is absolutely no need for cream. Put the remaining guanciale on top, kiss your creation and serve.’
TAGINE – MOROCCO
The Moroccan take on a stew. Meat and vegetables, spices and dried fruit, cooked with just a small amount of liquid in a conical pot.
Tagine, or tajine, is named after the utensil in which it is cooked (see: Paella). The word stems from ṭājin, the Arabic for pan. It dates back to the Arab invasion and occupancy of North Africa in the 7th century (and subsequently, in waves, over the next few centuries). Or was it a Berber creation in about the 9th century?
The distinctive clay ‘pan’ into which the ingredients are plac
ed has a shallow round base with low sides.
These ingredients comprise pieces of meat – usually lamb or chicken with or without the bones left in – onions and potatoes, chickpeas, dried fruit (dates, apricots, figs), spices and herbs. Only a little water is added, and it steams the food during cooking. There are two types of tagine, and each requires a different fat and spice. ‘M’qualli’ is a tagine cooked in oil, and with saffron, so the sauce is yellow. ‘M’hammer’ is cooked with clarified butter and paprika; the sauce, therefore, is red. A cone-shaped ‘lid’ is put on top of the base before the tagine is placed on the dying embers of a fire, where it cooks.
In these modern days, the tagine can be cooked on the hob, using a diffuser between the gas and the bottom of the pot. Or it can be put into a slow oven.
Claudia Roden, an acknowledged authority on Moroccan cuisine, offers plenty of tagine recipes in Arabesque, from lamb with caramelised baby onions and pears, to knuckle of veal with bulbs of fennel.
Before cooking, the tagine pot can be immersed in cold water for a couple of hours, preventing cracks in the clay. It is also traditional, but not essential, to rub the meat with the flesh of a sliced lemon before cooking. Couscous, Morocco’s national staple, often accompanies tagine. It is made from the husked and crushed semolina of un-ground wheat, introduced to Morocco by the Arabs.
Couscous takes its name either: from kaskasa, the Arabic word for ‘pounded small’; from keskou, the Berber word derived from the sound steam makes as it passes through the grain; or from kiskis, the earthenware pot in which the couscous is cooked.