How to Eat (56 page)

Cook the peas in boiling salted water as you would normally, only for a fraction longer. Drain and tip into a food processor. Squeeze out the soft, cooked cloves of garlic and add them, then the butter and Parmesan. Process to a nubbly but creamy purée. Season with the salt and pepper and cool before spreading. Sprinkle each crostini with a pinch of the mint.

ROAST PEPPER WITH GREEN OLIVE PASTE CROSTINI

If you find the charring and skinning of the peppers too labor-intensive for the effort-sparing strategy of the drinks-accompanying starter, buy them from a good Italian deli. I spread green olive paste on the toast first and top it with a soft tangle of peppers cut into strips, their skins already burnt off by someone else. If you do want to do your own, you’ll need 2 red and 2 yellow peppers; see
page 86
for the method. In either case, sprinkle with chopped parsley.

GORGONZOLA WITH MASCARPONE AND MARSALA CROSTINI

Marsala with gorgonzola is a translation of the British tradition of mixing port with Stilton. The nutmeg and mascarpone sweeten and blunt the pungency of the gorgonzola; even those who think they don’t like blue cheese find this gratifyingly edible. If you’re fed up with Marsala, use white port—my mother always kept a decanter of this in the dining room, and so I have a peculiar nostalgia for it.

This is the easiest crostini topping I can think of. When I make the little toasts, I sometimes anoint them with walnut rather than olive oil.

4 ounces gorgonzola, crumbled

1/3 cup mascarpone

2 tablespoons Marsala

whole nutmeg

1 tablespoon chopped parsley

Put the gorgonzola in a bowl with the mascarpone and the Marsala and mash together using a fork. Add a good grating or two of fresh nutmeg and stir again. Cover the bowl with plastic film and put in the fridge until you need it, but remember to take it out a good 30 minutes before you do, to make it easier to spread.

Sprinkle each crostini with a pinch of the parsley before serving.

LENTIL AND BLACK OLIVE CROSTINI

This looks good on a plate with the paler gorgonzola crostini, above. The idea is adapted from the glorious recipe for black hummus in
Recipes 1-2-3
by Rozanne Gold and is, in effect, just a purée of cooked puy lentils and bought tapenade with a spoonful of Cognac added. Remember that although it looks suitable for vegetarians, it isn’t—the tapenade contains anchovies.

1/3 cup puy lentils

large pinch sea salt, plus more, if needed

6 black peppercorns

3 tablespoons tapenade (black olive paste)

1 teaspoon Cognac

5 cherry tomatoes, blanched, peeled, and diced

1 tablespoon chopped parsley or snipped chives

To make the purée, put the lentils in a saucepan with the salt and the peppercorns. Pour over about 2 cups cold water and bring to the boil. When boiling, turn down the heat, cover, and simmer for 35 minutes, or until the lentils are soft. Drain the lentils, reserving 1⁄3 cup of the cooking liquid. Let cool for 15 minutes.

Then all you do is put the lentils in a food processor with the tapenade and process until fairly smooth, adding 2 tablespoons to 1⁄3 cup of the reserved cooking liquid, as needed, to make a spreadable (but still nubbly) paste. Remove to a bowl, stir in the Cognac, and leave to cool. Cover and stick in the fridge—for days on end, if you like. You might need to add salt, or it might taste very salty, but don’t be alarmed; on the toasts it will all mellow and come together. Spread on the crostini, sprinkle with the tomatoes and parsley or chives, and serve.

MUSHROOMS CROSTINI

Get a mixture of wild and cultivated mushrooms from your local greengrocer or buy a packaged blend from the supermarket. If you want to save time, instead of chopping the garlic you can fry the mushrooms in garlic-infused oil.

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 fat garlic clove, minced

leaves from 2 thyme sprigs, minced, or a pinch dried

8 ounces mixed mushrooms, wild and cultivated, wiped and minced

scant tablespoon freshly grated Parmesan

salt and freshly milled black pepper

1 teaspoon chopped parsley

Pour the olive oil into a pan and, when still cold, add the garlic and thyme. On the heat, cook for about 1 minute, then add the mushrooms, stir and cook until soft and fragrant, and then stir in the Parmesan. Salt and pepper robustly to taste. Put the mixture in a processor to make a coarsely chopped mixture (easier to spread), if you like, but make sure you don’t make a purée. Spread while still just warm and sprinkle the crostini with the parsley.

SHRIMP AND EGGPLANT CROSTINI

This is not as fiddly as it might sound, as all you do to the eggplant is bake it (if you’re making the garlic and pea crostini, you can roast the garlic for that at the same time), and there aren’t enough shrimp to make peeling them a nightmare. The eggplant tempers the heat of the pepper-spiked shrimp and makes them more spreadable. I get the shrimp from the fish seller at my local supermarket.

1 medium eggplant

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 fat garlic clove, minced or sliced finely

1 dried red chili pepper

6 ounces unpeeled shrimp

1 teaspoon chopped coriander or Thai basil

Preheat the oven to 400°F.

Put the eggplant into the oven straight on the rack and bake for 1 hour, by which time it should be soft-fleshed and cooked. Remove and leave till cool enough to handle, which won’t be long. Put a strainer over a bowl and scrape the flesh of the eggplant into the strainer so that it drains. Let it stand there until it’s cool, by which time it should be dry and all the excess liquid should be in the bowl.

Put the oil into a heavy-bottomed frying pan, add the garlic, and crumble in the chili. Sauté for 2 minutes, then throw in the shrimp and stir around the hot pan until the livid gray carapace turns holiday coral—2 minutes and they should be cooked but still tender. Remove from the heat and, as soon as you possibly can, peel the shrimp. Put everything—except the shells—into a processor and pulse to chop; you really need a mini one for such a small amount. Add the eggplant pulp and give another pulse. You need something spreadable but not smooth. Spread the shrimp mixture onto the crostini when you want to eat, and sprinkle with the coriander.

BEANS WRAPPED IN PROSCIUTTO

One doesn’t want to wade too deep into canapé land, but I would feel I was doing less than my duty if I didn’t faithfully report my other most-relied-upon starter-stand-in: beans wrapped in prosciutto. I saw these little bundles of green beans tied around the middle with Parma ham in an Italian delicatessen and went straight back home and made my own. Top and tail some green beans and cook them in boiling salted water. Remember that the beans need decent cooking, not mere dunking in hot water. Drain them, wait for them to cool, dip them in balsamic vinegar, then cut raggedy thin slices of Parma ham in strips and tie them round the bean-bundles.

You may take it for granted that whatever starter I suggest, you can always whip it away and provide the crostini or the fascist beans—I refer to their bundling only, there’s no darker connotation here—in their place. I won’t say that again. The following menus and recipes are merely suggestions, ideas for you to work on, ignore, play around with as you like. There’s no right answer, nor one way only to organize a dinner, compose the food. But at least being shown one path gives you the freedom to study the terrain and choose another. That choice might often mean not cooking at all, or very little. No one, for example, ever has to make a dessert. I am more than happy to get some perfect creation from the pâtissier, to buy ice cream and good cookies. But the relatively low effort needed to make any sweet thing will be repaid in gratifying disproportion by the pleasure of your guests. I propose only—you dispose or not, as you wish.

My menus, or sketches for menus, often give alternatives, an easier route, or different seasonal choice. The reasons are simple, but important. Sometimes we’ve got hours in which to cook, sometimes we haven’t; it’s as simple as that, and I wanted to show how speediness can be accommodated into a menu without ditching the whole thing. I wanted to show, too, why I thought one starter went with the particular main course, and how those principles or sensory judgments remain true even if their application is somewhat different. Thinking aloud seems to me the best way to offer direction, a sort of enthusiastic culinary companionship—without, I hope, being insufferably bossy. If I were in the kitchen with you, or you with me, these are the things we’d be talking about.

I make a distinction between dinners and kitchen suppers, but it is a slim one. At no time will you find me fiddling about with table decorations or doing clever things with the lighting. But there is a difference between a structured plan to bring people together over food and just having the usual suspects round after work. I don’t get up at five in the morning to buy bucketloads of flowers from the market (and people do, you know), but I do want things to look beautiful. Cheaper than flowers, and more useful because it doesn’t interfere with people’s line of vision as they’re sitting at table trying to talk to each other, is to use food rather in the manner of a still life. A bowl heaped with lemons or limes will always look beautiful. Eggplants, either those skin-stretched vast glossy ones or the compact, purplish babies, look fabulous. As I’ve said, I don’t like bowls of mixed things, but sometimes I have on the table a plate or low bowl of pomegranates mixed with pale, bark-colored dried figs, their once-red interiors just showing through the split skin, like spiky-toothed gums Crayola-colored an orange-scarlet.

As I am not a vegetarian, I don’t ever purposefully arrange a totally meatless and fish-free three-course dinner. And no vegetarian needs tips on meat-free cooking from a committed carnivore like me. But if you want to cater for vegetarians and suchlike, you need to make sure there is food they can eat without designing the dinner around them. I deal with it by having a vegetable starter (which I do often enough, anyway), soup or salad, say, and then I provide the vegetarian with a plate of wild mushrooms cooked with butter (olive oil for vegans) and garlic and thyme while everyone else eats their main course. The advantage is that a thick, dark stew of mushrooms is easy to do while you’re getting on with the starter, or before, and can sit in the pan to be reheated when it’s needed. And it goes well, without adaptation, with the potatoes and vegetables you’ll no doubt be doing anyway. The difficulty with doing vegetarian pasta of some sort is that it sets the eater entirely apart, but with the mushrooms she, or he, has just one different component.

There’s no need to make a big song and dance about what you drink with what, but I wanted to offer something good in the way of guidance. Following each menu, then, are brief notes by that distinguished but relaxed Notting Hill wine merchant, John Armit. He begins:

JOHN ARMIT’S WINE RECOMMENDATIONS

In general I have chosen one wine, although you could always choose to have two, say a white with the starter and a red with the main course. Many people would also choose a dessert wine: a muscat or a Sauternes from France, or a sweet German wine.

WINTER DINNER, WITH SUMMER POSSIBILITIES, FOR 6

CAESAR SALAD

LOIN OF PORK WITH BAY LEAVES AND LENTILS OR CANNELLINI BEANS

RHUBARB IN ICE CREAM, CUSTARD, JELLY, OR TRIFLE

This is perfect in January, when the rhubarb is new, trim-limbed, and Barbie pink; how you cook it, eat it, is up to you. I have tried to limit my suggestions, but not that hard—I want still to urge you rhubarbward. This menu works too in summer, when the rhubarb may be nearer khaki-colored and have slightly more spreading thighs, but will still have that peculiar mixture between delicacy and resonance. In summer I’d cook the pork maybe slightly in advance and leave it to cool for an hour before slicing it thickly and arranging it on a large, oval plate.

CAESAR SALAD

In my years as a restaurant critic I railed against the messed-about Caesar salad. So many chefs want to do their bit—to shave the cheese rather than grate it, so you lose that fabulous leaf-thickening coating, to throw in whole fresh anchovies, to substitute designer lettuce—and every addition is a loss. Perfection cannot be improved upon. And so what am I doing here, replacing the classic garlic croutons with small cubes of garlicky roast potatoes? Well, I do this because this is how it happened. Let me explain.

The first time I made the ceviche (see
page 314
) for dinner one summer, I thought it might be wonderful with some hot and salty crouton-sized, roast, diced potatoes. Reader: I was not wrong. After that, and because anything that’s in the oven gives me less grief than anything ever does on the stove, I took to roasting a small dice of potatoes and using them in place of croutons in salads all the time. I get a freezer bag, put in the potatoes unpeeled but diced, about ½-inch square, maybe slightly smaller sometimes, throw chopped garlic after them and then add 2 tablespoons olive oil. (When I’m in a hurry, I forget the garlic and use garlic-infused oil instead.) I shake the bag about so that the oil disperses and covers all the cubes of potato, empty them onto a baking pan, and then roast them for 45 minutes to 1 hour in a 400°F oven. When they’re glistening brown, I lay them on some paper towels and sprinkle with coarse sea salt. Then I chuck them into some dressed, tossed leaves—and, let me tell you, that’s all you need.