6
Grilled mushrooms tonight, slathered with some of that garlicky French cream cheese from the corner shop and stuffed inside a soft burger bun. A TV supper of the first order, especially the bit where the cream cheese melts into the cut sides of the toasted bun.
January 7
Frugal, pure
and basic
food for a
rainy night
I try to prune the raspberry patch whilst being buffeted by high winds; sacks, buckets and even the watering can being blown across the garden. It is this annual task, and that of pruning the fruit trees in the thicket at the end of the garden, that is the turning point in the year for me. Seeing the neatly trimmed canes and the newly shorn branches of the young quince, medlar and mulberry trees is what rings in the new year for me rather than the bells, whoops and popping corks of New Year’s Eve. Anyway, Auld Lang Syne always makes me want to burst into tears.
Pruning holds no fears for me. It is a job I look forward to almost more than any other. The crisp snap of secateurs slicing through young rose-pink and walnut-coloured wood brings the possibility that this year I might actually manage to control this downright wayward kitchen garden. A garden where dahlias poke through blackcurrant bushes and dark purple clematis rambles through damson trees. Pruning makes me think, however briefly, that I am in charge.
But I give up after an hour or two, the wind thrashing the swaying and heavily thorned raspberry canes across my face just once too often. I go in and toast crumpets, then make a stew and an orange-scented cake.
Stew
pot barley – 100g
onions – 3 medium
celery – 2 large stalks
a large parsnip
carrots – 2
potatoes – 4–5 medium
neck of lamb chops – 8 thick ones
a few sprigs of thyme and a couple of bay leaves
white pepper
water or stock to cover
parsley – a small handful
Boil the pot barley in unsalted water for a good twenty-five minutes, then drain it.
Get the oven hot. It needs to be at 160°C/Gas 3. Peel the onions and slice them into thick rings. Cut the celery into short lengths. Peel the parsnip, carrots and potatoes and cut them into fat chunks. That’s 2–3cm if you are measuring. Pile the vegetables into a large, deep pot, then tuck in the chops, thyme and bay leaves. Season with a little white pepper, no salt, then pour in the drained barley and enough water or stock to cover the meat and vegetables completely. Bring it slowly to the boil.
Skim off the worst of the froth that has accumulated on the surface, easily done with a ‘holey’ spoon. Cover the top of the stew with a sheet of greaseproof paper, then with a lid. Transfer the pot to the oven and leave it there, untouched or fiddled with, for a good two hours.
Remove the lid. The liquor should be thin, thickened only slightly by the potatoes. Chop the parsley and mix it in carefully, so as not to smash the vegetables, then season with salt and black pepper.
Leave overnight. Next day, skim the fat from the top, then reheat slowly on the stove till the meat is thoroughly hot and the broth gently bubbling. Check the seasoning – be generous – and serve piping hot.
Enough for 4
A frosted marmalade cake
I don’t, as a rule, like icing. Yet on a home-made cake, drizzled over so that it sets wafer thin, it adds a welcome contrast to the soft sponge. You could use water to mix the icing but I prefer to use fruit juice, occasionally adding a hint of orange blossom water to perfume each slice of cake.
butter – 175g
golden unrefined caster sugar – 175g
a large orange
eggs – 3 large
orange marmalade – 75g
self-raising flour – 175g
For the frosting:
icing sugar – 100g
orange juice – 2 tablespoons
Set the oven at 180°C/Gas 4. Line a loaf tin about 25 x 11cm and 7cm deep. Put the butter and sugar in a food mixer and beat till pale and fluffy. Finely grate the orange. Break the eggs into a small bowl and beat them lightly with a fork. With the machine set at moderate speed, pour in the beaten egg a little at a time, beating thoroughly between each addition. Beat in the marmalade and the grated orange zest.
Remove the bowl and fold in the flour with a large metal spoon. Do this slowly, firmly but carefully, till there is no sign of any flour. Lastly, gently stir in the juice of half the orange. Spoon the mixture into the lined tin, lightly smoothing the top. Bake for forty minutes, checking it after thirty-five with a metal skewer. Leave to cool in the tin – it will sink slightly – then remove and cool completely on a wire rack.
Sift the icing sugar and mix it to a smooth, slightly runny consistency with as much of the remaining orange juice as it takes – probably just under two tablespoons. Drizzle the icing over the cake, letting it run down the sides, and leave to set.
Enough for 8
January 8
The first
rhubarb
The first rhubarb appears with impeccable timing. Just as you want a fresh start to the year, along come the pale pink stems of the most tart and clean-tasting fruit to cleanse and invigorate. I no longer cut the stems into chunks and dip each piece raw into the sugar bowl like I did when I was a kid, but I do poach it only very lightly, so that the stems retain their shape, then I eat it first thing in the morning, slurping up spoonfuls of its limpid pink juice.
Frozen yoghurt with roast rhubarb
Warm, rudely pink rhubarb and snow-white frozen yoghurt has a smart, bright flavour and is breathtakingly pretty on a cold winter’s day. The frozen yoghurt is simply a bought vanilla smoothie chucked into an ice-cream machine; the baked fruit just rhubarb bunged in a dish with a spoonful of runny honey and the juice of an orange.
thick vanilla yoghurt smoothies – 3 × 250ml
young, pink rhubarb – 500g
an
