How to Eat (32 page)

RED MULLET WITH GARLIC AND ROSEMARY

Ask the fish seller to leave the pearly-pink, crimson-beaded skin on the fish but to remove the scales. For mincing the garlic, rosemary, and orange zest, I pile everything onto the chopping board and use my mezzaluna.

4 garlic cloves, minced

1 teaspoon fresh rosemary leaves, minced

zest of 2 oranges, minced

6 tablespoons olive oil

10 red mullet fillets with skin (about
3 ounces each)

¾ cup vermouth or white wine

Combine the garlic, rosemary, and orange zest and put half of this mixture into a large frying pan with 3 tablespoons of the oil. Heat, bring up to sizzling point, then add half the fish fillets, skin side down. Give them a couple of minutes a side or until you can see that the flesh has lost its raw transparency. Remove the fish fillets to a warmed plate big enough to take everything later and repeat the whole process with the remaining garlic mixture and fillets. Add these fillets to the warmed plate. Deglaze the pan with vermouth, let it bubble up, and, when syrupy, pour this, scraping up the chopped bits as you do so, over the fish. If you want a noodle accompaniment—and they do go well with it—then look at the noodle and snow pea stir-fry on page 178, eliminating, I’d think, the mushrooms. The mullet is wonderful without noodles, too, just with some grilled tomatoes and good bread.

GOOEY CHOCOLATE PUDDINGS

4½ ounces best-quality bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted
butter

3 large eggs

¾ cup sugar

¼ cup Italian 00 or all-purpose flour

Before you’ve even taken your coat off, put the chocolate and butter in the top of a double boiler above simmering water. Whisk every now and again until melted. In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar, and flour until just blended. Gradually whisk in the melted chocolate mixture. Set aside.

Grease 4 1-cup ramekins with butter and add flour to cover the butter, tapping the ramekins to get rid of excess. Preheat the oven to 400°F about half an hour before you want to eat the puddings. And I’d leave cooking them until you’ve finished the main course. It doesn’t matter if there’s no food on the table for 10 minutes; and these do have to be done at the last minute.

So, pour the mixture into the ramekins and put them on a baking sheet in the oven for 10–12 minutes, until the tops are firm and cracking slightly and the edges set. Serve immediately and consider providing a pitcher of cold, cold cream for people to pour into their pudding’s hotly deliquescing interior as they eat.

BEEF STROGANOFF

ROAST SUGAR-SPRINKLED PEACHES

Although beef stroganoff has to be cooked at the very last minute—which can often be the quickest route to a nervous breakdown in the kitchen—you can fry the onions and butter as soon as you get in. Then all you need to do once you’re on the verge of sitting down is reheat them gently for a couple of minutes in a little butter, remove them again from the pan and then proceed with the meat. From that stage you’re not more than about 3 minutes away from being able to eat, so this is worth bearing in mind for friends you just know are going to be late.

BEEF STROGANOFF

Most butchers can get you tail bits of fillet, which will cost less and which you won’t mind so much tearing into raggedy scraps. Cook a buttery mound of basmati rice to eat with it.

6 tablespoons (¾ stick) unsalted
butter

a few drops oil

1 large onion, minced

½ pound button mushrooms, sliced

whole nutmeg

salt and freshly milled black pepper

2 pounds beef fillet, cut into
thin strips

scant ½ teaspoon Dijon mustard

1 cup crème fraîche

a few pinches ground paprika

Put 2 tablespoons of the butter in a frying pan with a drop of the oil. Put on the heat, add the onion, and sauté gently, stirring frequently, until soft and beginning to color. Add 2 tablespoons more of the butter and, when melted, toss in the mushrooms and cook for another 4–5 minutes. Grate some nutmeg over the onions and mushrooms in the pan and season with the salt and pepper. Stir well and remove to a plate. Add the remaining butter to the pan with a drop or two more of the oil and turn the heat to high. When the butter’s hot, stir-fry the fillet for a couple of minutes, until it’s seared on the outside but still pinkly tender within. Return the onions and mushrooms to the pan; stir well. Grate over some more nutmeg and stir in the Dijon mustard, then the crème fraîche. Sprinkle in a pinch of paprika, add more salt, if needed, then pour onto a warmed plate. If you want, you can put the rice on the same plate, in a circle with the beef stroganoff in the middle (which is very much in keeping with the period in which this dish found most fashionable favor) or pile onto separate plates. Either way, dust a little more paprika over it once it’s served up.

ROAST SUGAR-SPRINKLED PEACHES

This is scarcely a recipe: get 5–6 peaches (enough for 2 halves each and then a little more), split them in half, remove the stones, and put them, cut-side up, in a buttered ovenproof dish in which they fit snugly. Into each cavity add a dot of butter and a tablespoon of sugar—vanilla, brown, or ordinary white, as you like—then another few dots of butter, and roast in a preheated 400°F oven for about 20 minutes. Think about providing some good bought ice cream to go with. And you can substitute apricots or, of course, nectarines.

SQUID WITH CHILI AND CLAMS

RICOTTA WITH HONEY AND TOASTED PINE NUTS

This is the sort of dinner I cook when I’ve got girlfriends coming over, chapter meetings of the martyred sisterhood. Even though quantities are enough for four, for some reason there are always only three of us, and I don’t reduce amounts of ingredients correspondingly.

I’m not saying that this menu is necessarily unsuitable for mixed company, but my experience teaches me that this is more naturally girlfood. Your experience may be fortunate enough to make you feel otherwise.

SQUID WITH CHILI AND CLAMS

I tend to get my fish from the fish seller and get him to clean the squid, but you can sometimes buy it ready-cleaned at the supermarket. If you don’t have any sake at hand, then use dry sherry.

32 cherrystone clams, well scrubbed and rinsed

5 tablespoons olive oil

4 garlic cloves, squished with flat of knife

1 dried red chili pepper

4 large squid (about ½ pound each), cleaned and the bodies cut into rings

1 cup sake or dry sherry

2–3 tablespoons chopped parsley or Thai basil

Rinse and scrub the clams under cold running water, throwing out any that are cracked, damaged, or stay open. Put the oil in a wide saucepan (which has a lid, though you don’t need it yet) on a high heat. When hot, add the garlic and crumble in the dried, whole chili pepper. Stir well, then add the squid and fry, stirring, for about a minute, until the glassy flesh turns a denser white. Add the clams, the sake, and 1 cup water, and then clamp on the lid and turn the heat down a little. Cook for 4–5 minutes, shaking the pan a bit every now and again, or until the clams are all steamed open, then pour into a large bowl and cover with the parsley or Thai basil.

It’s idiosyncratic, perhaps, but I find a bowl of plain basmati rice the perfect accompaniment. You might think of adding a couple of cardamom pods to infuse the rice while cooking, but no butter or oil at the end—that’s the point.

This doesn’t really count as a recipe; it’s more a suggestion.

RICOTTA WITH HONEY AND TOASTED PINE NUTS

Mound about 12 ounces of fresh ricotta in a pretty bowl (fresh, unsalty goat’s cheese, sliced and arranged on a plate, works just as well). Dribble a couple of tablespoons of good, clear honey over and then sprinkle on about 1⁄3 cup pine nuts, which you’ve first toasted till golden and waxily fragrant in a hot, oil-less pan.

SOLE WITH CHANTERELLES

MASCARPONE, RUM, AND LIME CREAM

What I generally do here is complete the first part of the mascarpone cream when I get in (that’s to say, everything up to the egg whites) and then whisk and fold in the egg whites just before I get started on the fish. It all depends on how early you get in from work; if it’s a bare half hour before you’re expecting everyone else, just make up the dessert, egg whites and all, in its entirety.

SOLE WITH CHANTERELLES

I love the ecstatic saffron intensity of the chanterelles against the fine whiteness of the sole, but don’t feel obliged to use them. I often substitute those surreally tinted pieds bleues mushrooms, available sometimes in gourmet markets, and oyster mushrooms should be just as good. If you can’t get your hands on garlic-infused oil to make this, add 1 teaspoon of chopped garlic to the butter with 1 tablespoon of olive oil; allow the butter mixture to heat and the garlic to soften but not color, then put in the mushrooms. Proceed as the recipe directs.

1 1/3 pounds chanterelles

9 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 stick plus 1 tablespoon), plus more, if needed

1 tablespoon garlic-infused oil (see
page 459
and headnote)

salt and freshly milled black pepper

8 sole fillets (about 6 ounces each)

juice of ¼–½ lemon

½ cup vermouth or white wine

2–3 tablespoons chopped parsley

Cook the mushrooms, wiped with a paper towel first if they need it, in 8 tablespoons of the butter and garlic oil in a large, high-sided if possible, frying pan, adding salt and pepper to taste, then remove to a plate or bowl while you get on with the fish. You shouldn’t have to add any more butter, but do, if you feel you need to. Add the sole in a couple or so batches and cook 2 minutes on the first side, then another on the second, or until just cooked through. This should be all the cooking they need, but poke a knife in to check. Remove them as you go to a large, warmed plate big enough to hold all 8 fillets, sprinkle with salt, then get on with the rest. When all the fish is on the plate, put the mushrooms back in the pan and heat them up, adding the lemon juice to taste and the vermouth. Let the mushrooms bubble up and stir in the remaining tablespoon of butter. Pour over the sole and sprinkle with the parsley.

I don’t think you need to serve anything more than a bowl of green vegetables with this—given that the dessert is not a lean one—and I’d probably choose some frozen young peas with a couple of handfuls of sugar snaps thrown in for the last 60 seconds or so of cooking time.

MASCARPONE, RUM, AND LIME CREAM

3 eggs, separated

6 tablespoons superfine sugar

3 1/3 cups mascarpone

3 tablespoons dark rum

juice of 1 lime plus more, if needed

Whisk the egg yolks and sugar together till light and moussily creamy. In another bowl, stir the mascarpone together with the rum and lime juice. Stir the egg mixture in gently but firmly, with a folding movement, and taste; you may want to add a little more lime juice. Don’t worry about sharpness unduly; you need that to hold the egg-enriched mascarpone in check. What you want to end up with is the creamy tartness, the taste of cheesecake, but with the whipped lightness of mousse.

Wipe the inside of the bowl you’re going to whisk the egg whites in with the cut side of the lime. Then whisk the whites till stiff and fold them into the mascarpone mixture. Decant into glasses and keep somewhere cool till needed. I leave this blank and unadorned, but you could always pare a strip of lime zest, or even cut a twist of lime, holiday-cocktail style, for the top of each glass. But plain or prinked, you must get hold of some cookies to eat with.

LAMB WITH GARLICKY TAHINI

PASSION FRUIT FOOL

Again, you can more or less prepare the dessert when you get in—just leave the combining of the seed-studded pulp and sweetened cream till last minute—and you can put the lamb in its scant marinade and get on with the tahini garlic sauce at the same time. That leaves you with the lamb to cook—15 minutes at most.

LAMB WITH GARLICKY TAHINI

with thanks to Steve Afif

I figure on allowing each person a couple of lamb noisettes, meat nuggets taken from the boned lamb loin, and further provide enough for half those present to have another one each.

1 onion, chopped roughly

1¼ cups extra-virgin olive oil

zest of 1 lemon and juice of 2