1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (11 page)

A 1928 magazine ad for Marsh & Baxter’s York Ham.

One of the world’s highly prized hams, the York original is made from the meaty Large White commercial pigs of Yorkshire and dry cured for about three weeks by a method traditional in the York region. (Thanks to this curing process, York has a distinctively drier and saltier taste than other English hams.) Rubbed with brown sugar and salt, the ham is then smoked over oak and aged for about four months to achieve mellow ripeness. The meat is either boiled and served cold, thinly sliced, or roasted with a sweet glaze or a crisp bread crumb layer. It is equally desirable with breakfast eggs as it is on buttered bread as a teatime snack.

The chances of finding a true York ham in the U.S. are slim, so a visit to England is in order. There, it is readily available by the pound in upscale London food shops.

Where:
In London
, Fortnum & Mason, tel 44/20-7734-8040,
fortnumandmason.com
; Paxton & Whitfield, tel 44/20-7930-0259,
paxtonandwhitfield.co.uk
.
See also:
Jabugo Ham
;
Schlachtplatter
;
Yunnan Ham
.

Among edible flowers such as roses (see
listing
), chrysanthemums, and violets, nasturtiums may be the most widely associated with the gourmet plate. Enjoyed in England at least as far back as the seventeenth century, they traveled to the French table in the eighteenth. The food authority of that era, Brillat-Savarin, credited one Marquis d’Albagnac for what became a veritable French vogue for edible flowers after the French Revolution. (The marquis had made a name and fortune for himself as a “salad designer” in stately English homes.)

As part of the trend toward the fresh and natural, the nasturtium’s delicate spring-green leaves and silky red, yellow, and orange blossoms have found renewed popularity these days. The tender leaves have a verdant peppery flavor similar to that of watercress.

The plant’s Latin name,
Tropaeolum majus
, translates to “trophy,” and was chosen because the plant’s leaves resembled shields hung by Romans as trophies after battle. Another one of its names is “Jesuits’ cress,” reflecting the nasturtium’s path as it was introduced from its native South America to Europe by colonizing Spanish Jesuits.

Today the flowers are most likely to be found strewn across salads, the leaves adding a springy texture and a sprightly essence, and the blossoms imparting a bright dash of color and a faintly perfumed bitterness. But old English recipes made a meal out of the nasturtium, stuffing its blossoms with chopped tuna, capers, gherkins, chervil, parsley, and mayonnaise. Its buds and seeds can be pickled as stand-ins for capers, a procedure accomplished by placing them in a jar, and covering them with boiled spiced vinegar, then leaving them in a cool dark spot for several months.

It does come back around to the oh-so-pretty and refreshing nasturtium salad, ever so simply described in the 1922 English cookbook
From a Housewife’s Note Book
with the following recipe: “Put a plate of flowers of the nasturtium in a salad bowl with a tablespoonful of chopped chervil, sprinkle over half a teaspoonful of salt, two or three tablespoonfuls of olive oil, and the juice of a lemon; turn the salad in the bowl with a spoon and fork till well mixed, and serve.”

Further information and recipes:
Cooking with Flowers
by Miche Bacher (2013);
food.com
(search stuffed nasturtium flowers);
splendidtable.org
(search nasturtium capers);
epicurious.com
(search nasturtium pizza).

Named for the Welsh town where it was widely produced and sold in the early nineteenth century, Caerphilly is a white, crumbly, semisoft cheese that was especially satisfying to miners for its restorative saltiness and easy portability. For the rest of us nonminers—women, men, and children alike—that salty, dairy astringency and softly moist texture make it an easy-to-like snack.

In the early twentieth century, Welsh Caerphilly came to be produced almost exclusively in Somerset, England, where cheesemakers were better able to meet the high public demand. Then, during World War II, strict rationing caused the production of Caerphilly to come to a halt entirely. Eventually, the cheese came to be mass-produced of pasteurized cow’s milk, making for an unfortunately drier, less flavorful product.

Now, thankfully, creamier artisan specimens are being turned out in both England and Wales, based on unpasteurized milk and aged one to three months at the longest to develop a dry pewter-gray rind and a butter-colored interior without spoiling or becoming chalky. The result lends itself to eating out of hand with fruit or raw vegetables and crackers, and can be grilled in sandwiches or melted down for rarebits or sauces.

Retail and mail order:
in New York
, Murray’s Cheese, tel 888-692-4339,
murrayscheese.com
.
Mail order:
igourmet.com
.
Tip:
The best brands are Duckett’s from England and Glynlyon, Caws Cenarth Caerffili, and Gorwydd from Wales.

Cock-a-leekie is served at Scottish celebrations of St. Andrew’s Day, Burns Night, and Hogmanay.

To honor the patron saint of Wales, Saint David, on his feast day, every March 1, the Welsh serve dishes made with leeks, the tall, stately member of the onion family that is their national symbol. Although strictly apocryphal, legend has it that Saint David advised ancient Briton soldiers to wear leeks in their hats to distinguish them from the Saxons they battled in the seventh century, thus avoiding casualties from their allies.

Whatever the custom’s origins, the story ends well: with an enticing leek broth (or
cawl cennin
, its Cymric/Welsh name) that is a meal in a bowl, based on chicken stock and thickened with oatmeal, and adrift with bacon, potatoes, carrots, cabbage, and plenty of aromatic leeks. Cock-a-leekie, the Scottish leek soup seen in restaurants in England and Scotland, remains more widely available than its Welsh counterpart. The soup combines leeks with fowl, barley, a slight sweet note from prunes, and a spark of cayenne pepper and mace. Although a large chicken is used now, the original was prepared with a cock or rooster, as the dish’s name suggests—often the loser of a cockfight. Both soups can easily be prepared at home, preferably with young, slender leeks as opposed to the large, older ones with tough white bases and even tougher leaves.

Cock-a-leekie pie is a stylish variation, much like chicken potpie, made with the same ingredients as the soup, minus some liquid, and baked under a pale golden crust. Try it at The Narrow, in London, one of Chef Gordon Ramsay’s celebrated outposts on the banks of the Thames.

Where:
In London
, The Narrow, tel 44/20-7592-7950,
gordonramsay.com/thenarrow
.
Further information and recipes:
The Whole World Loves Chicken Soup
by Mimi Sheraton (1975);
The Ploughman’s Lunch and the Miser’s Feast
by Brian Yarvin (2012);
theguardian.com
(search traditional british soup cock-a-leekie fearnley-whittingstall).

To call it melted cheese on toast would be to miss out on the glamour of this tangy, creamy between-meal snack regarded almost as a savory dessert throughout the British Isles. The Welsh original depends on the use of a Cheddar or Caerphilly (see
listing
) produced in Wales, melted and whisked with swirls of butter and cream or ale, and finally poured over hot buttered toast.

Wales has had the credit for this dish since the fourteenth century, and the arguments about rabbit versus rarebit go almost that far back. In the definitive tome
British Cookery
, it is conjectured that the original Welsh word was
rabbit
, but allows that
rarebit
must have some validity, as the dish is indeed a “rare bit.” Certainly, by the late nineteenth century, the word
rarebit
had caught on among the best chefs and finest diners, and the name bestowed a greater dignity to the dish (after all, the “rabbit” version of the name is also said to derive from the Welsh being such poor hunters that their forays after rabbits resulted in cheese suppers instead).

As one might suspect, Irish rarebit begins with an Irish Cheddar, while the Scottish is made with Dunlop cheese from East Ayrshire, and is seasoned with a splash of malty stout. Farmhouse Cheddar is the best choice for the English version, which is often seasoned with Worcestershire and most classically poured over wine-soaked toast. For the elaborate brunch variation called buck rabbit, poached eggs top the cheese-laden toast, their rich yolks mingling with the sharp cheese. For the sake of style, some tony restaurants glaze the cheese-topped open sandwich under a grill, while those who want to make a show of it melt and season the cheese in silver chafing dishes and ladle it over the toast tableside, in a British version of fondue.

Where:
In London
, Wiltons, tel 44/20-7629-9955,
wiltons.co.uk
.
Further information and recipes:
The Ploughman’s Lunch and the Miser’s Feast
by Brian Yarvin (2012);
theguardian.com
(search how to cook perfect welsh rarebit).
See also:
Raclette, Fondue, and Beyond
.

Steak truly is one of those things that makes this mortal coil bearable—especially when it’s a steak made of Black Angus beef. Originating in the rolling hills of Scotland, the breed of stocky, short-legged, full-figured cattle is prized for its
excellent marbling and especially for its thick layer of back fat, which not only helps protect the meat from bacteria but also ensures that it will be seductively tender, deliciously beefy, and most succulent when cooked rare to medium rare, the latter being the outer bounds of decency for such superb meat.

The breed, technically called Aberdeen Angus after the geographic region where the cows graze, has roamed Scotland for centuries, but was first recorded in herding books around the time butcher shops started appearing in that country, during the 1770s. An enterprising Scotsman, George Grant, imported four Angus bulls from his homeland to the prairie of Victoria, Kansas, introducing the breed to the United States in 1873. Americans at first considered the steer funny-looking—it was solid black and didn’t have horns—so Grant crossbred Angus with Texas longhorns. The results were very well received, and by 1883 some twelve hundred more Angus had been imported. The Black Angus remains one of the most sought-after breeds, as the basis for the decadent super-hamburgers we so crave. The “brand name” version of Aberdeen Angus cattle, introduced into the U.S. around 1979, is called “certified Angus beef”; to receive that encomium, the meat must be raised according to prescribed standards.