welcome relief after the pulled-back deadlines and
frenetic pace of December, but January has its own
problems. There are few fresh ingredients specific to
the month. The wild game season is still going, just, but
care is needed with what birds there are as they mature.
Apart from apples and pears available from store,
the only fruit are the citruses and the exotics. With
vegetables, there are roots and brassicas aplenty, and
Italy seems to produce a new member of the chicory
family almost every year. There is plenty of fish, if the
weather allows, and we live in an age where there is
no shortage of meat at any time of the year.
The other problem is that January is diet month.
Half the population – or certainly that section of the
population that might read the Financial Times – is
on a ‘dry’ January and a ‘detox’ diet. I prefer to defer
my attempts at detox until Lent, not for religious
reasons but because it seems more seasonally
appropriate. I do occasionally prescribe dishes
that are suitable for those trying to clean up their act,
but in the main I tread my usual path. While most
food pages are full of wellbeing and health, I reward
the remainder of the population who pine for more
substantial victuals. Nobody needs spiralised
courgettes in an English winter.
You Need a Good Bouilli
A Winter Broth
To get a really good bouillon, you need a bouilli. The
trouble is we don’t do bouilli anymore. Put your hand on
your heart and tell me when you last ate a piece of boiled
meat. No? I thought not. Unless it’s an egg, we just don’t
do ‘boiled’ anymore. Vegetables are ‘blanched’ or steamed,
meat is seared or ‘pan-roasted’ or, very occasionally,
‘poached’, and fish is much the same – although that is,
perhaps, less surprising. Once I had found ‘boiled carp in
grey sauce’ in a Polish cookbook, I knew I had reached
the nadir of unappetising dishes. However, boiled meat
is different: it’s just getting over that ‘boiled’ word.
Boiling certain cuts of meat – usually dry, lean cuts
such as silverside or brisket of beef – produces both a
succulent piece of meat, the bouilli, and a beautiful,
flavoursome broth, or bouillon. It is a win-win situation.
You eat slices of the meat with some vegetables that have
also been cooked in the broth and add a few punchy
condiments such as mustard, horseradish, salsa verde,
cornichons and other pickles and have a very good dinner.
Later you come to the broth.
I never agree that a good soup always has to have a
good stock. There are many that don’t. In my view, the
lovely freshness of a good minestrone should come from
the flavour of the vegetables alone; no cream soup or purée
needs a stock as that too would get in the way of the purity
of flavour – be it watercress, cauliflower or whatever. But
there are also soups that are truly meagre affairs when
they do not have the support of a good broth.
I make a lot of soups at home. Sometimes that is all
one wants for supper. They are never posh soups, such as
consommés or silky-smooth purées (I do not even possess
a blender, not in working order at any rate), but simple
soups, sometimes, although not always, stock based –
usually beef or chicken, sometimes a mixture of the two
– and fairly well packed with vegetables. The vegetables
are always, I hope, judiciously chosen but there is often an
element of tidying up the fridge involved, too: those last
two carrots and that half head of cabbage ought to go
somewhere, after all.
15
January
A WINTER BROTH
Serves eight to ten.
FOR THE BOUILLON
1kg (2lb 4oz) beef brisket
1 onion, peeled, halved and
studded with 6 cloves
2 carrots, peeled and cut
in half
1 leek, cut in half
4 sticks celery
3 bay leaves
a few sprigs of thyme
FOR THE SOUP
1 tablespoon olive oil
3 onions, peeled and cut into
5mm (1⁄4in) cubes
3 leeks, cut into 5mm (1⁄4in)
