How to Eat (44 page)

remaining juice from making the pastry, plus more, if needed

2 eggs, separated

1¼ cups superfine sugar, plus 1 teaspoon

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons (¼ stick) unsalted butter, melted

¼ teaspoon cream of tartar

Put the rhubarb in a saucepan with the orange juice and heat briefly, just until the rawness is taken off them. Remove and drain, keeping the liquid.

Put the egg whites aside for the meringue and beat the yolks in a bowl. In another bowl, mix 3⁄4 cup of the sugar with the flour and the melted butter. Then add the yolks, and enough of the orangey-rhubarb liquid to make a smooth and runny paste. Squeeze in more orange if you need more. Put the rhubarb in the blind-baked pastry shell and pour the sugary, eggy mixture over it. Put in the oven and bake until just set, 20–30 minutes.

Meanwhile, beat the egg whites until they form soft peaks, add ¼ cup of the remaining sugar, and continue to beat until glossy. I use my mixer until this point. I then change to a metal spoon and fold in the remaining ¼ cup sugar and the cream of tartar. Spoon this over the hot cooked rhubarb, making sure it is completely covered and there is no place, no gap where some rhubarb can bubble up through and over the meringue. Use the spoon to bring some of the meringue into little pointy peaks if you like (I do), but this is an aesthetic
diktat,
not a practical-culinary one. Sprinkle with the 1 teaspoon sugar and put back in the oven for about 15 minutes until the peaks are bronzy and brown-topped.

I like this cold. But for most tastes, eat it 10–12 minutes after it’s been taken out of the oven.

HIGH SUMMER AL FRESCO LUNCH FOR 8

To eat outside, you don’t necessarily have to cook a lot, but you’ve got a lot to think about. I’m talking here about a table-borne lunch outside in the garden. Choose nothing fussy, nothing that will grow waxy or dry in the heat, and nothing that will sit too heavily on the digestion. Lots of meat, quivering pots of mayonnaise in the sun’s glare, bread already cut—much traditional picnic fare is ruled out. Certainly a hunk of bread, a wedge of cheese, and a peppery salami will do on cooler days, but in even moderate heat, bread gets stale in a matter of minutes. Cheese and meat quickly grow a patina of rancid sweatiness.

GRAPES AND PLUMS

PAPAYAS

Pita is better—unsurprisingly—at withstanding heat; it does harden to cardboardy unpliableness if left out too brazenly, but covered with a napkin or toasted to order on a nearby barbecue, it will hold up better than ciabatta or baguette. Don’t bother cooking a dessert. You could go for the Yogurt with Honey and Passion Fruit on
page 211
; otherwise serve grapes and plums all’Italiana—bobbing about in water- and ice-cube-filled bowls—or any amount of fruit cut up with as much dexterity as you can muster (in my case, not much), Japanese style. Tropical fruits obviously do well in the heat. Cut papayas in half, remove the black stony pips, and squirt with lime, or fill the cavities, avocado-style, with strawberries that have been chopped and macerated with a sprinkling of balsamic vinegar or with plain, unadorned raspberries.

Food that suits hot weather is—it stands to reason—food that’s customarily eaten in hot countries. I tend to go for the food of the eastern Mediterranean. I am not pretending to set up a taverna in my backyard; but when it’s hot I want tabbouleh, hummus, garlic chicken, mint-sprinkled slices of eggplant, and the balm of juicy, cold, jade-colored wedges of cucumber.

TABBOULEH

I love this salad of cracked wheat, mint, and parsley to be very green and very sharp, but if you want it to be grainier and oilier, then adapt it as you wish. In many recipes you will find cucumber stipulated as well; by all means add this if you want, but I tend not to as after a while it makes the salad go wet and watery. I keep leftovers in the fridge to be squished into pita or a baked potato for the next day’s lunch and, indeed, eaten whenever the desire overcomes me. Tomatoes seem to hold up pretty well in the dish, although I always add them just before serving the tabbouleh the first time. Perhaps it’s just that I don’t mind the pinkly-stained sogginess so much on my own account when it’s brought out for the second. Red onions, if they’re not mild, can make this very intensely oniony, so taste a bit of the onion (and the scallions—they too can vary) before you judge how much to add. Tabbouleh, surprisingly, works very well too with cold—poached or baked—salmon for a different take on a traditional summer food. Warm, pink, sweet lamb—noisettes seared on a griddle until medium-rare, let to stand for 5–10 minutes, then sliced thinly on the diagonal, heaped on a nearby plate, and sprinkled with some salt, chopped mint, and marjoram—is terrific with tabbouleh, too. Like a lot of foods with bite, once you eat this you hanker after it again.

Be very wary of using a food processor for chopping the parsley and mint for this, which must be done at the last minute to preserve their flavor. It does have a tendency not so much to chop herbs as to reduce them to a wet mush. But when you are chopping a reasonably large quantity the danger can be avoided more easily; just pulse on and off quickly and (after checking) repeatedly so that the herbs don’t get pulverized before you’ve had a chance to intervene. Leave the leaves relatively large, too; after all, the parsley and mint are the major part of the salad itself, not flavoring in it.

1 cup medium bulghur

juice of 2 lemons, plus more, if needed

2/3 cup olive oil, plus more, if needed

salt and freshly milled black pepper

½ cup parsley leaves

½ cup mint leaves

12 scallions (white and green parts), sliced into thin rings, or 1 large or 2 small red onions, minced

6 flavorful tomatoes

Put the bulghur in a bowl, cover it with boiling water, and leave to soak for 30 minutes. Drain the bulghur in a strainer, getting rid of as much water as possible.

Put the bulghur in a serving dish and pour over the lemon juice, olive oil, and a good sprinkling of salt and pepper. Meanwhile, finely chop the parsley and the mint.

Throw the chopped parsley and mint into the dressed bulghur and stir in the scallions. Put the tomatoes in a bowl and pour over boiling water from the kettle to cover. Leave them for a few minutes, then remove, peel, cut in half, and take out seeds. Dice the tomatoes and stir into the herbs and cracked wheat. Taste and add more salt, lemon juice, and oil if it needs it.

HUMMUS WITH SEARED LAMB AND TOASTED PINE NUTS

This isn’t an obvious pairing, but I think it’s an authentic one. That’s to say, although I’ve never seen mention of it in cookbooks, I’ve eaten it—in both Turkish and Lebanese restaurants. And I love this combination of cold, thickly nutty, buff-colored paste and hot, lemony-sweet shards of meat, and the waxy, resiny nuts—it instantly elevates the hummus from its familiar deli-counter incarnation. You could use good bought hummus—but just dribble a little good olive oil on top, and round the edges, before topping with the nuts and lamb.

And as far as authenticity goes, I don’t make any claims for my hummus recipe, for I add yogurt. Nor do I apologize for my innovation. Homemade hummus can be stodgy and sticky, and I love the tender whippedness that you get in restaurant versions (which, come to think of it, are probably brought in). If you leave out the yogurt, you may have to add a little more of the chickpea cooking liquid. Don’t be afraid of making this too liquid; it’ll most likely stiffen on keeping anyway. With the yogurt, I find I can still use up to 1 cup cooking liquid when puréeing the chickpeas.

I use noisettes of lamb for this because I know that they’ll be lean but still satiny within. Cut the noisettes into lardons, small fingerlike strips of meat, then cut these in half horizontally. That’s the size of meat you’re aiming for.

I also use garlic-infused oil to sear the lamb because I like it when the lamb has a garlicky taste, but I don’t want burnt shards of garlic mixed up with it. Marinating the lamb with a few cloves of crushed garlic can work, but then it doesn’t sear as well. But ordinary olive oil works well too, and because the hummus itself is garlicky, you hardly risk blandness by omitting the garlic with the lamb.

The quantities in this are based on the use of a shallow wide or long dish to hold it; if you’re using a deeper, smaller dish, cut back on the lamb and pine nuts.

1½ cups dried chickpeas

1 medium onion

2 bay leaves

7 garlic cloves, 3 unpeeled, 4 peeled and chopped roughly

1 teaspoon salt, plus more

3 tablespoons olive oil

9 tablespoons tahini

juice of 1½ lemons, plus more, if needed

fat pinch cumin

freshly milled black pepper

3 heaping tablespoons yogurt, preferably full fat, plus more, if needed

½ cup pine nuts

3 tablespoons garlic-infused olive oil (see
page 459
) or plain olive oil

¾ pound lean, tender lamb, cut in small thin strips (see headnote)

salt

2–3 tablespoons chopped parsley

warmed pita, for serving

For the hummus, soak and cook the chickpeas following the instructions on
page 78
, throwing the onion, bay leaves, and the 3 unpeeled garlic cloves into the pot, too. It is imperative that you taste the chickpeas to see if they are truly cooked enough before draining them; undercooked chickpeas make for an unsatisfactorily grainy texture, and you want a voluptuous velvetiness here, no hard surfaces. When you’re satisfied the chickpeas are buttery and tender, dunk a large measuring cup in to catch a good 1½ cups of the cooking liquid, and then you can drain the chickpeas with a clear conscience.

In the food processor add the chopped garlic, the salt, ½ cup of the cooking liquid, olive oil, tahini, the juice of 1 lemon, and cumin. Blitz till well and truly puréed. Taste, adding more liquid as you feel you need to loosen and soften the mixture. Process again, then grind in some pepper, add the yogurt, and give another whizz. Taste to see whether you want to add any more lemon juice (and you could want double) or yogurt, or indeed oil or seasoning. When you have a smooth yet dense purée with the intensity you like, scrape out into a bowl, cover, and keep in the fridge until about an hour before you want to eat it.

You can toast the pine nuts before then, but the lamb must be done at the last minute. To be frank, then, you may as well do them both together. Decant the hummus into a shallow round or oval bowl and put to one side for a moment.

Put a heavy-bottomed frying pan on the stove over medium heat, add the pine nuts, and shake every so often until they begin to take on a deep golden color and their resiny fragrance rises from the pan. Pour onto a plate or into a bowl and then add the garlic-infused oil to the pan.

When the oil is hot, toss in the lamb and stir furiously until it begins to crisp and brown at the edges. Add the juice of the half lemon, push the meat about once more, and empty the contents of the pan evenly over the hummus, lemony oil juices and all.

Sprinkle with salt, season with pepper, and scatter with the toasted pine nuts. Add the parsley, then serve immediately and with the pita.

TARAMASALATA

I wouldn’t eat taramasalata with the lamb-heavy version of hummus here, but it’s a bit like giving a present to one child: you just can’t give the one recipe and leave out the other. So I add the taramasalata here. But maybe not just for that reason—in order to complete, too, the childhood picture I have of my mother stuffing bread, ritually uncased cod’s roe, oil, lemon, briskly into her blender—and a really vile one at that, with an olive-green plastic top and a goblet made of dull bronze plastic, like a fourth-rate gangster’s shades.

To make taramasalata, put about ½ cup smoked cod roe (or mullet roe, if you can find it) into a food processor. Add 2 slices of firm white bread, left to get slightly dry, then soaked in water and squeezed out, 2 garlic cloves, and the juice of 1 lemon. Purée to a thick, smooth paste. Then process again, while pouring about 10 tablespoons olive oil down the feed tube. Remove the lid and taste; you may need some more lemon juice and oil. I sometimes add a dollop of yogurt, as with the hummus. When it’s as you like it, remove to a shallow bowl and dot with a few halved, stoned black olives, should the mood take you.

If I’m eating this with pita, I like some scallions to accompany it, too; but I have a rather deep and inexplicable love for this just spread on hot toast made from plastic white bread.

GARLIC CHICKEN WINGS

There are countless ways you could let garlic breathe its sweet, smoky breath over these bony joints; this method requires very little effort (though a little early planning) for great effect. It avoids absolutely the burning and bitterness you can get with chopped raw garlic and adds the velvet mellowness of baked garlic without the extra hour’s cooking that would take. I make and eat these compulsively. I should add that children adore this, so if you’ve got a lot of them coming for lunch, do boost quantities.