A bit nipsville

We’ve had a fortnight of serious cold, which as I sit down to write about warming food, appears to have abruptly ended. The beautifully odd frozen fountain on the 18^th century square where we live has melted without me having got round to taking a photo. It grew, splash by splash, as the cold days passed, to a spectacle of ogreish deformity. It was a sight to see... Sorry.

Red cabbage has helped keep us warm. Always cheeringly colourful, it can do sharp, spicy and crisp as a counterpoint to a calm, warming stew; or still spicy but less sour, sweet with apples and a tickle of muscovado – warming on its own, but at its best with the magnificence that is a confit duck leg; or enriched with duck fat and onions, and simmered with wine or beer. Served in a great steaming mound with smoked sausage, spuds and bacon, all cooked in the same pot. A dish to warm like a bonfire on even the most nippy of nights.

The latter is a choucroute for people who don’t like choucroute or sauerkraut, as the germans call it. It is my way of not needing to buy the perfectly white, fermented cabbage from Alsace, which is a strange taste I’ve only recently, gradually, acquired. I served it with some great cheap bits of confit duck at my last cave soirée. Still flavoured with juniper and cloves, it is sweet where the proper choucroute is sour. And, whereas the cooking liquor is traditionally strained off, I like mine, so I include it as a thin but rich and tasty gravy. It's almost garbure, the  thick stew/soup from the Bearn region, made from duck and cabbage. Whatever you call it, it'll warm the cockles of your heart!

Red Choucroute

½ to 1 whole red cabbage, depending on the size and how many you want to feed), thinly shredded

3 or 5 onions

A couple of cloves of garlic

An extremely large dollop of duck fat

1 bottle of cheap, very dry white wine. Or continental-type lager, 750ml.

Some kind of stock, homemade is best, obviously, but a cube will do. Failing that, a bit of water.

A teaspoon of juniper berries, crushed up

A couple of whole cloves

A tablespoon of coriander seeds (if you have them – you can do without)

A bay leaf

Salt and pepper

A firm-fleshed potato per person

3 or 4 carrots

Some or all of the following including at least one smokey thing:

A chunk of smoked or unsmoked pork belly (streaky bacon)

Smoked sausages

A ham hock (simmered separately for an hour or so – in water with a bay leaf, onion, carrot, peppercorns, a few fennel seeds and a bit of garlic. This will make great stock. You can use some of it below, and make soup from the rest)

Confit duck (I use wings and neck -cheap-, but leg is great, gizzards wouldn’t go amiss...)

Just make sure there is enough meat for everyone to have some of everything. Bearing in mind that this is a meal for greedy people.

The long bit is shredding the cabbage. Try to slice as thin as you can, but don’t chop your fingers off... It’s a good exercise in knife skills, actually. If you’re including the ham hock, get it cooking before you attack the cabbage.  Slice the onions similarly, chop up the garlic a bit and gently fry these two in a large, deep pan (with a lid) in much more duck fat than you think is necessary.

When the onions have softened, add the juniper, bay leaf, cloves, coriander and lots of pepper. Give a stir and add the red cabbage. Mix it all thoroughly so that the duck fat has coated all the cabbage. Turn the heat up. Try the wine/beer. If it’s nasty put it all in the pot. If it’s drinkable pour yourself a glass, the cabbage will have to cope with what’s left.

Add stock to nearly cover the cabbage. Nestle in your bacon and ham hock if you are having one, add a little bit of salt if you’re not. Cover with a snug lid, bring to a simmer, lower the heat and cook, ploof... piffle... plip, for half an hour.

Take off the lid and have a nose. Make sure there is still some liquid. Push your remaining meat into the cabbage. Lie spuds on top of the lot, to cook in the steam. Replace the lid and simmer for another hour or so, adding the carrots on top of the potatoes with half an hour to go.

Open up the pot and have a taste. Is it salty enough? The juices should be sweet, spicy and delicious. The cabbage still a deep purple. Remove all the meat and veg to one side. Pile the cabbage onto a giant serving dish, add a bit of the gravy and arrange the garnish on top. Bring to the table still steaming hot and munch, slurp and sloop with plenty of crusty bread and prodigious quantities of wine*.

*Interestingly, both red and white are good. For our wine and food evening we had:
Rully 1er cru La Pucelle 2009 Domaine Jacqueson (white Bourgogne)
Trousseau Grands Vergers 2009 Domaine Gahier (Red Jura).
Faugères Tradition 2010 Domaine Binet Jacquet (Red Languedoc), The Borgogne won for me, hands down, bringing out the corriander and complimenting the sweetness of the duck and cabbage brilliantly. The reds were quite different, the Languedoc rich and round, with a bit of spice, which complimented the meat and the smokey flavours nicely, whereas the Jura was in direct contrast to the sweetness of the dish, supplying a sharp side to cut through all the richness, and, let’s face it, fat... Anyway, plenty of good choices on the booze front!!

Namaste नमस्ते

This week I have mainly been watching Manjula’s Kitchen. I have become a sad fan... I love her!

Manjula is a North Indian vegetarian living in America who welcomes you into her kitchen on one of the more interesting corners of the internet. I was looking for a recipe for the brilliant pea-and-potato samosas that I used to scoff in Leeds on my way to university. They were sold (I’m sure they still are) in every second newsagent’s and the dusty, spicy grocer’s shops in Hyde Park, the shopkeeper’s wife or mum having knocked up a dozen that morning. There is a much less significant Pakistani community in Liverpool and I never found anything to compete when I came home – less still in the south of France... I have had regular pangs ever since, but I am easily distracted, and it took cooking for a big bunch of Frenchies to prang me from my indolence.

I needed a cheap starter to counteract a slightly overgenerous main course for November’s  food and wine tasting soirée in our local cave. I cook what I fancy and Thomas Le Caviste uses his astonishing, and frankly intimidating, knowledge to select some interesting and complementary pinard. I cook, he pours, and we sit with our lucky guests around a big table and sup and chew and chat la merde. Vive La France! What I want generally entails good old-fashioned British Fayre, which seems to be an interesting change for the French, so samosas fit the bill nicely! The spotted/potted wonders that are Google and Youtube came up trumps and now Manjula is in my life!!

Manjula single-handedly provided me with one starter: Samosas with Tamarind* and Coriander Chutneys; good old Fergus Henderson with another: Red Winter Salad with crèmefraiche**, chervil and a caper or three; and Malika, a girl I worked with, with the third: Harira Soup.

The samosas are a bit fiddly, but fun to make. Chop up a boiled spud and fry it with some cumin and coriander-scented onions, a few frozen peas and a tickle of fresh ginger and green chilli. Bung in a handful of coriander leaves, season with salt, garam masala and lemon juice and the filling is done. The pastry is a very simple one of flour, salt, oil and water (plus an optional spoonful of semolina for improved texture), rolled into saucer-sized circles which will each make 2 little ice cream cones to be stuffed with spicy spud. Crimp the edges with a fork, apparently a more Pakistani touch, and they get deep fried quite slowly till golden and crispy and scented and nice! Try not to eat them when still mouth-searingly hot, as the flavour is much enhanced when they are just warm. A dunk of the sweet, citrusy tamarind, and a dribble of coriander chutney and your tootle is tinkled! You could be late for an 18^th Century French Literature seminar***...

I’m afraid that after the samosas, I realised that I had to get my finger out if the guests were to be fed, and so photography had to be abandoned. The red salad is rather a delicious one made with raw shredded beetroot and red cabbage mixed with thinly sliced red onion and dressed with some nice olive oil and a splash of my rather posh vinegar (yum!). A gesture of capers and chervil, with a splodge of crème fraiche, and a very pretty salad is ready to be messed up.

My Moroccan soup, harira, was based on some unwanted lamb stock from work that I bolstered with a beef rib and some lentils and chick peas. It had a spot of chilli, cumin seeds and fresh herbs and some lovely yellow turnips added at the end so that they retained a bit of bite. The beef rib (not the kind you find on a generous foodie-type’s Sunday table, but the cheapest beef cut, like a pork rib – only off a cow) somehow makes the whole thing splendidly sweet, which combined well with the earthy pulses and spices and the freshness from the herbs and the stingiest squeeze of a lemon.

For mains we had a thick slice of veal shin braised in bière blonde with a very lot of very caramelised onions and fat pieces of fatty bacon. Served with rather a baddass mashed potato and buttery spinach. It’s all about the marrow in the middle. And the melting, gelatinous meat, of course. And the rich, sweet gravy. And the very bad-for-you mash! Mmmmm, it was good... I do like this kind of winter food – very satisfying, and copious to the point of fuddlement. The guy next to me had a second helping of mash – I was very impressed: that boy was a joy to feed!

*Tamarind is another amazing recent discovery for me. I’m sure I’ll get round to raving about it here at some point. In the meantime, check out the link for this lovely, simple recipe – a top alternative to Mango Chutney. Manjula likes it with chips!

**PLEASE click this link for the whole thing! It is good.

*** For which you haven’t read the book.