cookrookery

You’re running a little restaurant in the Midlands, Britain. A family come in and order cawl, Cullen skink, partan bree, skirlie, Arbroath smokies, collops, a large Melton Mowbray (with a side of neeps) and some clootie for dessert. What do you bring them?

Answer: lamb and leek broth, seafood soup, crab in cream, oats fried with onions, whole smoked haddock, sliced meat, cold pork pie (with mashed turnips) and boiled fruit pudding. But doesn’t it sound better in the original?

This is a detective story, and the story began long ago, when I was reading Danny the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl. If you don’t already know it, Roald Dahl really knew how to write for children. He focused obsessively on food, for one thing, Charlie and Chocolate Factory being the perfect example. I, however, have always preferred savoury foods, so it was the descriptions in Champion of roast pheasant (“don’t forget, Danny, before we put the bird in the oven, we have to lay strips of fat bacon across the breast to keep it nice and juicy. And breadsauce, too. We shall have to make breadsauce. You must never have roasted pheasant without lashings of breadsauce. There are three things you must always have with roasted pheasant – breadsauce, potato chips, and boiled parsnips”) Yorkshire pudding (“My mum could make toad-in-the-hole like nobody else in the world. She did it in an enormous pan with the Yorkshire pudding very brown and crisp on top and raised up in huge bubbly mountains. In between the mountains you could see the sausages half buried in the batter. Fantastic it was”) aniseed balls (“The trick with aniseed balls is never to bite them. If you keep rolling them around in your mouth, they will dissolve slowly of their own accord, and then, right in the very centre, you will find a tiny brown seed. This is the aniseed itself, and when you crush it between your teeth, it has a fabulous taste”) and, most riveting for me, the cold pie Doc Spencer brings Danny on the day after his father is injured.

“Very carefully, I now began to unwrap the waxed paper from around the doctor’s present, and when I had finished, I saw before me the most enormous and beautiful pie in the world. It was covered all over, top, sides, and bottom, with rich golden pastry. I took a knife from beside the sink and cut out a wedge. I started to eat it in my fingers, standing up. It was a cold meat pie. The meat was pink and tender with no fat or gristle in it, and there were hard boiled eggs buried like treasures in several different places. The taste was absolutely fabulous. When I had finished the first slice, I cut another and ate that, too.”

I have always been hypnotized by this description, but how to reproduce it? No recipe is included, not even in Memories with Food at Gipsy House, his cookbook, which I searched first. A certain amount of detective work was required.

Like any detective, I began by examining the clues. What did we know, I mean really know, about the pie in question? The facts, ma’am? From the sole passage Dahl left us with, we know these things:

1. The pie is eaten in England.
2. The pie is served cold.
3. The pie is enormous.
4. The pie has sides, which indicate it is a ‘tall’ pie, not a ‘flat’ pie such as an apple pie. An apple pie is encased in a top and bottom crust like a flying saucer. A tall pie is hand formed or made in a mould and resembles a drum. We have further confirmation from this in the beautiful illustration by Jill Bennett. Bennet was one of Dahl’s original illustrators, and if it were up to me, Quentin Blake would still be waiting for the phone to ring.
5. The meat in the pie is pink.
6. The pie contains whole hard boiled eggs.

I began with the first point. Was there, in fact, a tradition of cold meat pies in Britain, or was this just freeform culinary magic whipped up Doc Spencer’s wife, or, more accurately, Roald Dahl’s appetite? It did not take much research to find out that cold meat pies are in fact a British (and New Zealand, interestingly) staple, and that the meat is pork. That took care of points 1 and 2, and solves the question of the meat, which is not specified. However – when pork is cooked, it turns grey, and does not remain pink… unless it is preserved pork. Wikipedia describes the “common pork pie” as follows:

“The common pie uses cured meat. Often produced in moulds or forms, it gives the outside of the pie a very regular shape and the inside filling a pink colour. It is easier, simpler and cheaper to produce in volume, and hence the more common choice for commercial manufacturers.”

Yet this description does not exactly fit our suspect. For one thing, Doc Spencer specifically tells Danny that his wife made the pie, rather than buying it at Sainsburys. Hard boiled eggs are nowhere included. Could the pie in question be Roald Dahl’s description of the handmade, artisanal pork pie known as the Melton Mowbray, after its place of origin in Leicestershire? The Melton Mowbray pie is a premium price pie and as such the Melton Mowbray Pork Pie Association have been granted protection under the “Protected designation of origin” laws. In other words, just as champagne can come only from Champagne, France, a Melton Mowbray can come only from Melton Mowbray, England.

I returned to point 1. Where, so far as I could specify, did Champion take place? Six and a half miles from Hazell’s wood, where Danny and his father go to poach pheasants from the extremely unpleasant landowner Victor Hazell. Did Hazell’s wood exist? It turns out that many Dahl fans have already done their research into the real life location of Champion, and the consensus is that, due to landmarks described (Cobbler’s Hill, the road to Wendover,etc), it takes place in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, where Dahl lived in the 1960s, and is buried today. There is no Hazell’s Wood in Great Missenden, but there is a similar wood called Shortenill’s Wood. Good enough for me. Now how far is Great Missenden from Melton Mowbray? According to Google maps, the two towns are 100 miles apart travelling on modern freeways. That’s a fair fraction of the United Kingdom. My conclusion, therefore, is that the pie in question is not a Melton Mowbray, and Doc Spencer’s wife was left to fall back on her own devices and grand tradition of home cooking.

Well, there I was. I knew the meat of the pie and that it was homemade. All that was left was to make one.

Roald Dahl Pork Pie

The British cold pork pie requires three things: pastry, filling, and pork jelly, which is poured in a hole in the top after the pie has been baked and left to set while the pie cools, holding everything together as well as being delicious in itself.

Pastry

Pastry has never been my strong suit, and this pastry was tricky. It had to stand up on its own to form the sides. Most pork pies are made in a mould, but something told me Doc Spencer’s wife didn’t use a mould. So I made a pastry out of lard, flour and salt. I will not post the recipe because I’m not happy with it yet, and you could probably do better.

Filling

I’m a lot better with filling. I decided to use uncured pork (violating the description of the original with some pangs of regret). I used shoulder of pork, diced fine but not ground, salt, freshly ground pepper, dried sage and thyme, and a sprinkling of nutmeg. I also hard boiled an egg. I wasn’t making an ‘enormous’ pie (violating the description for the second time), so one would do, right smack in the centre.

Pork Jelly

This was the fun part. Jelly is essentially stock made from bones which has been reduced enough for the gelatin in the bones to overpower the water content and set. Of course, you could always use regular stock and add some aspic. My jelly recipe was something like:

2 lb pork bones (practically free at the Farmer’s market)

2 carrots, roughly chopped

1 onion, cut in half, unpeeled

2 sticks celery

2 bay leaves

sprigs of fresh parsley

1 tsp black peppercorns

a bare sprinkling of salt

This is my standard stock recipe. I just put everything in a large pan, cover it with cold water, and simmer for hours, skimming the foam where necessary. When I feel it has reduced enough (i.e. it tastes good), I strain out the ingredients. At this point I can continue to reduce the stock as needed. In this case, I wanted jelly, so I reduced and reduced and reduced. Once cooled, it congealed. I felt it could congeal just a little more, so  when the time came I dissolved a little aspic into the hot stock.

The Process

Forming the case was the hardest part, but it was the whole point, wasn’t it? I rolled out 2/3 of the dough into a neat circle, then, like a potter, began pinching the edges up to form a nice squat pie with slightly bulging rounded sides, the sort of thing a hobbit would eat. It took a while and the pastry kept cracking, which is why I am not posting the recipe. The end result, for structural reasons, was thicker than it should have been, and while tasty, was not all edible. Never mind. Next time I’ll just use a mould.

In went the filling, with the hard boiled egg in the centre. Then with the remaining dough I made a pretty lid for the pie, sealing it well so the hot jelly would not leak out. I added two holes to admit a funnel, although I believe one is more traditional. Brushed the whole thing with beaten egg. In it went, to bake in the oven, 350 degrees F for about an hour, until golden brown.

When the pie was cool, I heated up my pork jelly into liquidity again, stirred in a touch of aspic, and poured the jelly in through the two holes in the top. It was the moment of truth. Would it leak all over the kitchen?

It didn’t leak. The final, triumphant pie went in the fridge to cool into solidity.

Oh, I am happy with my first pork pie. It was beautiful, the meat tasty, the hard boiled egg like a little hidden treasure as described, and the jelly delicious. The pastry was a little too thick. I will buy a small, tall pie mould when I can find one, and continue to experiment. But right now, I’m a little closer to the world of Roald Dahl, and that is reward in itself.

Happy holidays, everyone.

It’s like an episode of Iron Chef: what can you make with wheat bran,  mustard, seaweed, chillies, beer, apple peel, and cabbage? Clock’s ticking!

The answer, naturally, is nukazuke, or Japanese bran pickles.

I learned about this bizarre practice in Japanese Cooking, A Simple Art, by Japan’s answer to Julia Child, Shizuo Tsuji. He informed me that pickles are a crucial part of the traditional Japanese diet, rather as bread is to the English and wine to the French. Often they are the only part of a meal besides rice. I don’t know why. Perhaps pickling was an important way to preserve vegetables in harsher times, or perhaps the Japanese just really, really like pickles. Probably both.

I have, in my time, followed a Japanese recipe for quick pickling cucumbers by slicing them fine, mixing them with salt and a little konbu seaweed and lemon rind, and leaving them for an hour to express their moisture. This, I learn from Wikipedia, is called asazuke and is the second most commercially produced pickle after kimchi. It is not, however, technically a pickle but a ‘preserved vegetable’ because of the brine, at least according to the EU. Asazuke are a kind of introduction to Japanese pickles, a hint at the massive labour that is to follow if you are going to walk the road of Japanese pickledom. Once you have mastered asazuke it is time to do what most traditional households do and make your own nukazuke.

Before we begin, I have to say this is one of the weirdest ways of creating food I have ever heard of. That alone is reason enough to do it. I must also say that, at the time of writing, my pickles still have a long way to go before maturity, so I cannot vouch that it actually works. Perhaps this is all a big hoax. I’ll get back to you on that one.

To make nukazuke, you will need a suitable container that you won’t need for anything else, possibly ever again. I followed this particular technique because it does not require a crock with a floating lid, something I have never managed to find for sale. Shizuo Tsuji recommends a stoneware crock or a glass vessel, deep and not too wide, or a Japanese wooden pickle tub, if you can find one, but even a plastic bucket with a lid will work. I happened to have the perfect vessel on hand, a ceramic pot with a lid that Chris gave me years ago. Chris used it to make oven-baked macaroni and cheese according to his own recipe, which is still some of the best macaroni and cheese I have had. It has now been repurposed for pickling.

You will also need rice bran, although wheat bran is an acceptable substitute. Apparently oatmeal and even cornflakes will work, but I’m not willing to experiment with that drastic option just yet. I still don’t understand fully how this even works.

My Recipe for Nukazuke

Adapted from Japanese Cookery, a Simple Art

10oz wheat bran (or rice bran if you can find it)

1 Tb mustard powder (I use Coleman’s)

3 Tb sea salt

1/2 cup beer

1 1/2 cups water, boiled and cooled

peel of one apple

4 dried red chillies

4″ square of konbu seaweed

vegetables

Make sure the bran is completely dry, by heating it in the oven if necessary (but don’t brown it). Put it in the pickle crock and, kneading it with your hands, add the mustard, salt, beer and water. It should be slightly pastelike. Distribute the peel, chillies and seaweed through the mix.

With one hand, dig deep in the mash and add a few vegetables. These will not be eaten, so they don’t have to be something you really want to eat. A leaf or two of cabbage will work. Insert 2 or three more vegetables at the middle and top layers of the mix, covering with bran to finish. Put the lid on the crock and leave it in a dark cool place (like Studio 54, that’s a dark cool place).

Let the vegetables sit for 24 hours, then dig them out and throw them away, giving the mash a good stir as you do so. Replace them with new vegetables. Follow this routine for the next 10 days. At this time, you can start making pickles to eat. Extract the apple peel and toss it.

I am only on day four of this recipe, so I will save the later part until I am certain it works. So far I can report that at the end of day one the mash smelled like wheat bran. By day two it smelt very faintly of beer, and now it definitely smells like fermenting fruit, as when you make your own wine. I think it’s working. Stay tuned.

While we’re on the subject of stoneware crocks, I came across a recipe the other day that sounded so disgusting I absolutely had to try it. It was courtesy of Luke Nguyen. You may not know who he is, but he’s bigger than Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain combined, in my home country of Australia. His recipe was called Pork Ribs Slow Braised in Medicinal Broth and included traditional Chinese medicine ingredients such as ginseng, lily petals, lotus seeds, dried goji berries, prunes and longon. I abhor traditional Chinese medicine, chiefly because of its smell, and only secondarily due to its taste (because I have never found a convincing reason, after smelling it, to taste it). But I enjoyed the technique he used, and after some fudging, put together my own recipe.

Ginseng is available in Asian markets, but I bought mine at a local store that specialises in crystals, incense, tea, and carven images of the Goddess.

Goji berries are also called wolfberries and barberries, and I was amazed to find I had a package of these already. What did I buy them for? I have no idea, but it was probably something Middle Eastern.

I couldn’t find lotus seeds so I substituted pickled lotus instead.

I couldn’t find dried longons so I substituted tinned longons instead. I like longons. They are very like lychees.

I couldn’t find lily petals, and, as mentioned, I’m not crash hot on the whole Chinese medicine thing anyway, so I left them out.

My Version of Pork in Medicinal Broth

Adapted from Luke Nguyen

1 large pork blade steak with bone

1 teaspoon dried ginseng

1 teaspoon barberries

several hot pickled lotus shoots

6 longons

1 Tb pearl barley

several slices of daikon radish

6 prunes

1 tablespoon raisins

2 diced birdseye chillies

Remove the pork from the bone and cut into large chunks. Rub these lightly with salt and set aside.

Combine the remaining ingredients in a glazed clay pot with a lid (I used my Japanese donabe I use for hotpot). Mix in the pork. Tuck the bone in there somewhere, and top the whole thing up with water, just covering the ingredients.

Now for the tricky part. Place the pot inside a larger saucepan, and fill the saucepan with water to about 1/2″ below the lid of the clay pot. Cover, bring to the boil, then turn the heat way down low and let it barely simmer for three hours.

While this simmered I wondered two things. Firstly, whether the contents of the clay pot would somehow become edible, and secondly, how to remove the pot from the boiling water without freaking out and dropping it with a splash. Luke Nguyen charming explains that, as a professional chef, he’s “okay with boiling water.” Me, I am not. In the end I took it from the heat and added some cold water to the saucepan to replace the water that had boiled away. This enabled me to remove the clay pot without much trouble. Handles, or tongs, would have helped.

And the taste…?

It was fabulous. The pork was amazingly tender and the broth was delicious. Pork and fruit, I should have realised, are a natural combination. The daikon and lotus added a little salty spicy kick. In fact, it was so good that my wife let me know any time I felt like making it again, she would not be adverse to eating it, and that by no means happens every time I cook a recipe simply because it sounds disgusting.

Well done, Mr. Nguyen. I should have trusted you.

A little while back I claimed I could make fresh pasta, but since my recipe was no better or different than all the other recipes out there, I wasn’t going to share it with you.

I was lying. I couldn’t make fresh pasta.

I thought I could. I’d played around with pasta machines in the past. Yet the results, if not exactly disappointing, were no better or different than a bag of San Remo from the supermarket.

Things have changed. I have discovered 00 flour. And I have discovered the fun of making fresh pasta requires abandoning the pasta machine.

00 flour is Italian flour which has been ground as fine as possible – practically talcum powder fine. Now, there is debate as to the actual merits of using 00 or doppio zero flour. Some claim it is ideal for pasta making but useless for bread making. Others, notably Jeffrey Steingarten, have pointed out that it is the protein level that counts, and flours of many different protein levels can be ground doppio zero fine. The only real reason I started using 00 flour, if I am honest, is that my all-purpose flour pasta was kind of mediocre, and I found a food importer that sells doppio zero. Finding a rare ingredient readily available is almost always reason enough to buy it.

So, now that I have mastered handmade, fresh, 00 pasta, I feel I can freely share it with you as though there were not thousands of identical articles already scattered all over the internet. Behold my recipe!

Fresh Pasta

3 organic eggs

2 cups 00 flour, or as needed

1/2 tsp salt

Since there are only three ingredients here, it’s important that they be of high quality. Here is where I actually insist on organic, free range eggs from a chicken called Colin who has lots of chicken friends to play with (Portlandia reference). It will make a difference. The flour should be imported Italian 00 flour. This recipe does work with all-purpose flour, but what’s the point? I mean really? You’ll almost certainly be better off buying dry pasta, unless you just really like to play with flour. Full disclosure: I am not certain I used exactly 2 cups of flour. I just made a mound big enough to contain three eggs. Try it – it works.

You will also need a large, clean work surface, and a decent rolling pin. You will need time. You will need to be in a meditative mood. This is a lot of fun to do, if you are not in any great rush.

Mix your flour and salt and mound up on your workspace. Note that you do not need to sift the flour. There would be no point. 00 flour is so fine it would pour through a sieve like water, anyway.

I used to mix up my pasta in a bowl, which I think was one of the reasons it was so bland. (It can take a long time for me to acknowledge that there might be a reason something is always done in a traditional fashion and resists simplification.) Pasta should be made on a work surface, not in a bowl. Mound up the flour, make a well in the centre, and crack in 3 eggs.

Using a fork, gently beat the eggs. Do not be in a rush to incorporate the flour or the mixture will become lumpy. As the flour is gradually absorbed, mound up the sides of the well with the palm of your hand to prevent a catastrophic dam break.

When the dough starts to become too thick to stir you can begin to knead it with flour-covered hands. At this point the work surface will start to collect hard sticky bits. Remove these periodically with a knife or a pastry scraper or your dough will accumulate chunks. Fold and flatten the pasta with your hand as you incorporate more flour.

The aim here is to attain dough that is soft and malleable but not sticky. Add flour gradually and continue to knead. When you judge you have a nice smooth dough which does not feel like poster putty, divide it into two balls and let it rest for 15 minutes under a clean dish towel.

Now for the fun part. Scrape clean the work surface, or move to a different work surface, and roll out one of the balls of dough. Sprinkle it with flour regularly to prevent it sticking, and flip it over often. It helps for the next step if the dough is in a nearly rectangular shape. Roll, roll, dust, dust, flip, flip. Here is where you get to show off your skills as a dough-roller: you want the end result as thin as humanly possible without being unmanageable. 1-2 mm is ideal.

Now for the other fun part, where you don’t need a pasta machine. Dust your dough one more time on both sides and loosely roll it up. Using your sharpest knife which you’ve just sharpened, slice the roll into strips as wide as you’d like your final pasta to be. Try and make spaghetti! It’s hard. Fettucine is much easier.

Nearly done! When you’ve sliced about half the roll, uncoil the cut strips and drape them over something (a coat hanger, a towel rack, a curtain rod, your partner’s outstretched arm) to dry. Proceed with the other half of the roll. Don’t leave it rolled up too long, or it will start to stick.

And that’s it, although don’t forget you have another ball to do. You can cook the pasta right away, or leave it for a few hours to dry, after which it will keep a week in a bag or airtight container. Remember that it only takes a few minutes to cook so keep testing it as it boils in order to attain perfect al dente-ish-ness.

Take a break. You sure earned it.

The reports of my leaving the kitchen have been greatly exaggerated.

Indeed, I’m spending a tad more time there since the microwave kicked the dust a week ago. I absentmindedly pushed the release button on the ancient Panasonic and it shattered, fell backward and wedged, dropping a corner of busted acrylic upon the counter. I freaked for about ten seconds: how would I reheat vegetables, or that last cup from the morning French press? When I realized how ridiculous that sounded, I plied the damn appliance from its long-suffering corner, and welcomed the counter space for which I’ve longed for months.

Today I reheated some of the French onion soup I made yesterday on a good ol’ gas burner. Yeah, I used to microwave it before. No real time difference, all told. A few minutes stirring over low heat and the pepper jack melted into the hot caramelized onion simmered in beef stock with a dash of balsamic and I was in heaven for lunch.

The summer has been one of slim finances at a level I’ve not quite experienced before, so I’ve been learning to rely on instincts more and less on recipes. I re-imagined my Grandmother’s classic baked custard, a homage to the woman who inspired my baking, and the gentlemen who tried it said that it should be breakfast on Christmas morning, a new holiday morning tradition, sharing silken eggs and milk, warmed and sweetened with honey and nutmeg, the scent and warmth of home and family made real. The simplest ingredients, transformed.

Since friends and I ate the custards before they could be photographed, I offer pics of another of Grandma G’s recipes I made, her sugar cookies, which again utilize her secret weapon, nutmeg, to make the most basic of concepts into pure goodness.

My sweet tooth will never quite go away, though I’m increasingly attentive about types and quantities of sugar, preservatives and other additives. As the chill returned to Seattle in September, I found myself suddenly craving one of the best bars my mother made. Peek-a-Boo Bars were so named because the shiny bright red canned cherry pie filling upon a crust of almond dough peeked through the top layer of dolloped almond dough. In my family it also bore the distinction of being one of the rare bars whose warm fresh-from-the-oven flavor was just as exceptional as straight from the freezer . . . this is one seriously awesome pastry. I took the jar of boozed-up cherries Rebecca sent me a Christmas ago and replaced the artificiality of canned filling with the plum-colored tiny fruits. The sourness added a remarkable tang to complement the sweet almond. Seriously awesome.

That recipe came from the Wencl cookbook, one such my mother contributed to along with several other Wencl women. As I paged through, I found Cookie Sheet Cake on page 138. I don’t know how I’m related to Lucille Svatos, but her cake is delicious. Rustic perfection for Midwest church events and family gatherings, 2 T. of cocoa make this more aptly a cocoa cake than a chocolate cake. I alit upon it because I found some shortening in the pantry I wanted to use up. The cake also required sour milk among its ingredients (lemon juice in milk for 15 minutes), and I replaced half of the vanilla with coffee extract, toning down the sweet perfectly. The batter rose nearly all the way up the sides of the cookie sheet and I seriously questioned whether or not I should go ahead, but upon baking it rose a good inch yet remained inside. You could glaze it or add a thin cream cheese frosting, but I prefer my cake without. Some cakes are great without, and this is one of them.

Finally, this weekend, the gentleman who gave me my cat Gryphon as a housewarming gift, Ivan, stopped by. I hadn’t seen him in over a year, so I made some fresh strawberry bread to go with coffee. A sticky batter filled with diced fresh strawberries stretched along a cookie sheet, doused with cinnamon and sugar and then puffed up in the oven into a yummy pull-apart bread. It’s meant to be eaten straight from the oven, and it is.

I love fall. Welcome back rainy, hyper-intense, grandly colorful, portentous and transforming Autumn.