How to Eat (24 page)

1/3 cup white wine or vermouth

1–2 tablespoons chopped parsley

To further cleanse the clams of their sand, put them to soak in a sinkful of cold water to which you’ve added 1 tablespoon of baking soda. Allow to soak 1 hour.

Heat water for the pasta. When the water comes to the boil, add salt and then the linguine. Cook the linguine until nearly but not quite ready; you’re going to give them a fractional amount more cooking with the clams and their winy juices. Try to time this so that the pasta’s ready at the time you want to plunge it into the clams. Otherwise drain and douse with a few drops of olive oil.

In a frying pan with a lid, into which you can fit the pasta later, fry the garlic gently (it mustn’t burn) in the olive oil and then crumble in the red chili pepper or add the pepper flakes. Add the clams to the pan. Pour the wine or vermouth over and cover. In 2 minutes, the clams should be open. Add the pasta, put the lid on again, and swirl about. In another minute or so, everything should have finished cooking and come together; the pasta will have cooked to the requisite tough tenderness, absorbed the salty, garlicky, winy clam juices, and be bound in a wonderful, almost pungent sea syrup. But if the pasta needs more cooking, clamp on the lid and give it more time. Chuck out any clams that have failed to open.

Add half the parsley, shake the pan to distribute evenly, and turn into a plate or bowl and sprinkle over the rest of the parsley. Cheese is not grated over any pasta with fish in it in Italy (nor indeed where garlic is the predominant ingredient, either) and the rule holds good. You need add nothing. It’s perfect already. Serves 1.

COD WITH CLAMS

If you are afraid of tackling fish in general and of cooking seafood in particular, just reading this recipe will show you how easy it is, but doing it is even better. Ease of execution is not the same as ease of attainment, of course; as with all fish, cod is ruined by overcooking. This is one of those simple but essentially last-minute recipes that is easier to cook for one or two (or, at a pinch, four) than a huge tableful of waiting people. But if you want to turn this into dinner-party food, choose a firmer (and more expensive) fish such as monkfish and strain the sauce to get rid of the stray bits of fishy detritus. I have nothing against cod, but it can disintegrate a little when it sits around.

10 littleneck clams, well scrubbed
and rinsed

pinch cayenne pepper

½ pound cod fillet with skin, cut
from the top end of the fish,
¾–1¼ inches thick

scant tablespoon cornstarch

1 tablespoon unsalted butter plus
1 teaspoon, cold (optional)

drop of oil

1 fat clove or 2 smaller garlic cloves, minced or sliced

4 tablespoons dry sherry

2 tablespoons water

1 tablespoon chopped chives

1 tablespoon chopped parsley

Throw out any clams that have remained open after cleaning. Put the clams to soak in a sinkful of cold water to which you’ve added 1 tablespoon of baking soda (this will help them disgorge sand) for 1 hour. Mix the cornstarch and the cayenne and dredge the cod lightly with it. You’ll have some flour left over; just chuck it out.

In a wide, heavy-bottomed pan into which the cod will fit flat, melt the tablespoon of butter and the drop of oil. Add the garlic and cook for a bare minute, stirring all the time; above all, you don’t want the garlic to burn or even burnish. Put the cod in, skin side down (I don’t eat the skin; it’s just that I find the cod is more likely to stay in one piece if I cook it like this) and cook for 2 minutes, then turn and cook on the other side. Flip back to its skin side and throw in the clams, then add the sherry and water and put the lid on. Cook for about 3 minutes. Take out the cod, remove or keep the skin, as you wish, and put the gaping-shelled clams around it on your plate; discard any that stay shut. Then let the juices left in the pan reduce by bubbling away for 2–3 minutes. If you want—and I do—whisk in the teaspoon of butter, divided into 2 or 3 tiny bits. Pour the juices over the fish on your plate. Throw over the chopped herbs. Eat with thickly cut bread that’s good enough to be dunked without turning to pap.

Serves 1.

If you’ve never cooked moules marinière, you might balk at the thought—too fiddly, too unknown, too intimidating. But cook them once and you’ll see that actually this is scarcely cooking at all. It is easy to buy cultivated mussels that don’t require cleaning; then there’s just shallots to chop, with some parsley and garlic, and the rest is about applying heat and liquid. Try this once and you won’t need me to persuade you that it’s easy. After that you will automatically start thinking of this as something you can cook quickly, with little effort and to great effect.

MOULES MARINIÈRE

I like a lot of winy mussel liquor here, so use more wine to start off with than you might find elsewhere. Traditionally, the onion or shallot, garlic, and parsley are just simmered in the wine at first; then, after the mussels are in and steamed open, everything’s removed to the bowls, the liquid strained, and the butter whisked in. Do it that way, by all means, if you want to. More often I tend to do it as follows.

4½ pounds mussels, preferably cultivated

4 tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter

2 shallots or 1 small onion, minced

2 garlic cloves, minced or thinly sliced

5 tablespoons chopped parsley

1¼ cups white wine

If using uncultivated mussels, wash them well. Scrape off any barnacles and pull off any beards. Throw away the cracked mussels or those that stay open after you’ve rapped rudely and insistently on their shells. (And when cooked, throw away any mussel that has stayed closed.)

On medium heat, in a pot that will take all the mussels later and that has a lid, put in the butter with the shallots, the garlic, and about 1 tablespoon of the parsley. Stir about for a minute till the smell of the garlic rises and that particular, familiar fragrance wafts gloriously out of the pan. Add the wine; cook for another minute or so, with the lid on, but with the heat lowish. Then turn the heat up up up, throw in the cleaned mussels, and clamp the lid back on. Give the pot a shake occasionally. Look after 3 minutes and remove all the opened mussels you see, then put the lid on again and give them another 2 minutes. As you’ve got time while waiting for the rest of the mussels to open, I’d remove the empty shells of the already cooked mussels; it’ll just make the plates a little less crowded, but it’s hardly crucial. When the rest of the mussels are steamed open, remove them to your bowls (and you’ll need huge ones). Take the pot off the heat; let the juices settle for a moment so any grit that might be in the mussels sits at the bottom. Then pour the juices carefully over each bowl of waiting, gaping shells, leaving the gritty bits at the bottom. Sprinkle over the remaining parsley. On the table put another couple of bowls or plates for the empty shells and a baguette or other good white bread.

Serves 2.

As I say, I do think it’s a good idea to get into the swing of cooking fish. When I’ve got a lot of people eating, I might cook a fish pie (see
pages 242
and
357
), but when there’s just me, or two of us, I don’t mind a bit of the necessary last-minute flash in the pan. Fish, I think, is best fried in bacon fat, which you can’t easily buy. If the bacon you get is good enough, you can provide the wherewithal easily enough. I always mean to keep the fat left in the pan after frying bacon (I’ve given up grilling it; apart from anything else, I can’t wait that long for the grill to heat up), but the immediate pleasure of dunking a piece of bread in the pan to soak up the salty juices, the delectable grease, often prevents me.

EXCEPTIONAL SALMON

To cook exceptional but unfancy salmon for your supper, fry 2 slices of bacon, chopped fairly small (pancetta, cubed, would do as well), in a frying pan you’ve sprinkled with a little oil and then heated. When they’re beginning to go from crisp to hard brown, remove the bacon to a waiting paper towel. Immediately put a piece of salmon in the pan, sear on each side, then cook for a minute or so, depending on the thickness of the fillet, at a lower heat. Put together some green leaves—just lettuce, or varieties of, and some scallions cut into rings—and leave them be for a moment while you transfer the fish to a plate. Then squeeze some lemon juice into the frying pan and pour the juices over the waiting undressed salad. Toss the salad, add the bacon bits and toss again, and add to the plate with the salmon. Sometimes I leave the salad in a bowl, cut the salmon into pieces, and add it, tossing, with the bacon.

If I’m feeling in the mood for excess, I boil 2 eggs for about 6 minutes (somewhere between soft and hard, yolk still oily but dense), peel and halve, and add them to the bowl of bacon and salmon salad. Or I take 2–3 tomatoes, briefly cover them in boiling water, then peel and seed them and add them in fat strips to the salad. This is one of the few times I’d consider eating tomatoes with fish. The following suggestion is another.

SALADE NIÇOISE

The world doesn’t need another recipe for seared tuna. But the only way I like salade niçoise is inauthentically—that’s to say, with fresh, not canned, tuna. This makes for good solitary eating; there’s also enough cooking to make you feel that you’re actually making something.

First, you have to see to your potatoes. What you want are boiled or steamed small waxy potatoes, about 6, cut into thick coins while still warm, then dribbled over with olive oil and given a good grinding of pepper, preferably white, but the color is no big deal. Meanwhile you should have put your 6–8-ounce piece of tuna, cut into thick short strips, to marinate in a tablespoonful of olive oil, a good squeeze of lemon juice or red wine vinegar, and a sprinkling of soy sauce. At the same time, put 1 tablespoon of capers, which, preferably, have been packed in salt rather than brine, to soak. Cook some trimmed and halved green beans, drain, plunge into cold water, and drain again. Put about 4 cherry tomatoes in a bowl, pour over some boiling water from a kettle and leave for a few minutes, then peel. Leave till cool, then quarter.

So—to the oil-drizzled potatoes in your bowl (I like a big shallow one, all to myself), add the tomatoes, green beans, some fresh marinated anchovies (the sort that lie in bowls in the slope-windowed fridge case at the specialty food shop), the capers, rinsed and drained well, and some torn-up bits of lettuce or baby spinach. Make a garlicky dressing, strong and astringent, pour over, and toss the salad gently. If you want eggs, boil for 6 minutes. I like them still oily-yolked, a good dripping gold, not dusty yellow. And if you’re in fancy mode and are up to all that fiddly peeling, quails’ eggs work well.

Meanwhile, heat your pan to seething, add oil, if you need it, then the tuna pieces; cook briefly but intensely on all sides. Throw in the marinade and let it bubble up, clinging stickily to the pieces of fish. Add the fish to the salad, toss, and eat. And d’you know, if you can get those silver-skinned, ivory-fleshed, fresh filleted anchovies, you don’t even need to bother with the tuna.

SCALLOPS AND BACON

This is one of my favorites; it has just the right balance between nursery comfort and dining room elegance and takes hardly any time to cook—and thus is just what you need after a hard day’s work. Properly speaking, it is more of a starter, but when there’s just two of you eating, it makes a perfect supper almost in its entirety; all I’d add is a dark and leafy salad, dressed with walnut oil and lemon juice.

Always buy your scallops from a fishseller, never in a supermarket.

1 teaspoon oil

4 slices bacon, halved lengthwise

10 bay or sea scallops

1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

freshly milled black pepper

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

¼ cup dry sherry

1 tablespoon chopped parsley

Put the oil in a heavy-bottomed frying pan and, when hot, add the bacon. Cook until crisp and remove. If using sea scallops, cut in half horizontally. Season the flour with the pepper and dredge the scallops all over in the flour. Add the butter to the pan and over a low to medium heat, fry the floury scallops, turning once, for 2–3 minutes or until they are just cooked through. Put the scallops and the bacon on a plate. Over the heat, add the sherry to the pan and pour it over the scallops and bacon. Sprinkle with the parsley and there you have it.

Serves 2.

When I’m in Italy, I love eating those small, fleshy shrimp that are scarcely cooked, but just turned with garlic, chili pepper, wine, and oil in a hot pan until they lose their gray transparency, becoming suddenly, shinily coral. You can make a variation of this at home with ingredients that can be kept easily at hand.

SHRIMP WITH GARLIC AND CHILI PEPPER

2 tablespoons olive oil

½–1 fresh red chili, according to size and taste, minced

2 garlic cloves, chopped

½ pound unshelled medium shrimp