Is There a Nutmeg in the House? (25 page)

The cream sauce can be made in advance in the way described for the lobster recipe above, and left until it is needed, with a film of butter over the top. It must be re-heated in a bain-marie, and the cheese added and stirred smooth when the sauce is hot. See that it is rather highly seasoned, and leave it with the water simmering very gently underneath until you are ready for it.

The rice is cooked in approximately 10 times its volume of water, with 1½ tablespoons of salt. Avorio rice takes longer to boil than Patna – about 18 minutes. Rinse under the tap and drain in a colander. Have ready a lightly buttered soufflé dish, cake tin, or fireproof bowl. Put your cooked rice into this; on the top put a folded teacloth. Put it in the oven, turned right down to its lowest temperature. There you can safely leave it for 15–20 minutes, before turning it out on a shallow and well heated dish and pouring the sauce over and round it.

Vogue
, January 1959

How Versatile is Risotto?

Those who prefer their risotto anglicised will never lack for recipes. Only the other day (I am writing in 1978) the London
Times
published a recipe for a dish called ‘A Versatile Risotto’. The rice specified was long-grain, there were 4 ½ bacon rashers and ½ lb mushrooms to ½ lb of rice. It was suggested that a sliced green pepper could be included ‘for colour’; scraps of cooked chicken, a few cooked peas, some floured and fried chicken livers could be thrown in. In due course, the inevitable chicken stock cube made its appearance in the list of ingredients. So did grated Cheddar cheese.

The method of cooking was in a tightly covered saucepan, approximately that used for a pilau – it could be that the author of the recipe had discovered that long-grain rice just does not respond to the Italian risotto method – and having at last added
the chopped cooked mushrooms (their cooking liquid strained off – and presumably thrown down the sink) and half the cheese to the rice the final directions strike a note of almost sublime absurdity. ‘Serve just as it is – preferably with a crisp salad.’ Just as it is. It’s difficult to see what else you could add. A nice tomato sauce? A few Brussels sprouts?

Now I am well aware that such a dish may have its appeal to those with more appetite than discrimination, and especially to those brought up in the British tradition of jumbling together a number of incompatible ingredients and eating them all at once off the same plate. These readers would not surely be interested in knowing whether they were eating a kedgeree, a chop suey or a pilaff? Why then tell them that it is a risotto? It is, to say the least, discourteous to those readers who look to a responsible newspaper for information to so mislead them. Not long ago I tangled with the
Guardian
over a preposterous recipe for a Quiche Lorraine containing mushrooms, scraps of ham from the delicatessen (it sounded very unhygienic), stale cheese, and sundry other ingredients made into a custard and poured into ready-prepared pie shells.

Although the
Guardian
did have the grace to publish my letter of protest, the perpetrator of the recipe wrote to invite me to eat her creation which she assured me was ‘really very tolerable’. No doubt, no doubt. At any rate to those tolerant of jumbled up leftovers. What the lady had failed to appreciate was that my real complaint was based on her choice of nomenclature. Tolerable the concoction may have been to her friends. A Quiche Lorraine it could not be to anybody. In the same way Miss Katie Stewart’s ‘versatile risotto’ may well be ‘tolerable’. A risotto it cannot conceivably be called. If Miss Stewart had just named her creation ‘a bacon and rice dish’ I don’t suppose anyone would complain or think twice about it. Is it that the word risotto sounds more glamorous than just English rice? But what, I wonder, would an Italian reader make of the
Times
recipe?

I wonder too what would be an English reader’s reaction – even an uninformed one – if, in a respected Italian newspaper, he were to come across a recipe for let us say English marmalade made with sweet oranges, macaroons, and ricotta cheese, chopped spinach and dried figs. I can assure you that such a mixture is no scrap more preposterous in its relation to marmalade than is the
Times
formula for a risotto to any authentic version – and heaven knows there are many to choose from of this famous and very fine Italian invention.

Unpublished, 1978

VEGETABLE AND SHRIMP RISOTTO

To achieve a true risotto, the very first requisite is the right type of rice. Italian rice is quite unlike any other. The grains are large, round and pearly, with a clearly defined hard white heart which prevents the rice turning mushy and is responsible for the characteristic flavour and for the unique consistency of a risotto – a dish which in Italy is invariably eaten as a first course and in restaurants is listed on the menu with the soups. Indeed, a risotto almost
is
a soup. Almost – but just not quite.

If you have never eaten a risotto correctly cooked in Venice or in Milan it is difficult to appreciate that there is a split-second in the cooking of the rice – just as for scrambled eggs – when the consistency is exactly right. It is neither too liquid nor too compact. It is light, every grain is separate although bound together in a homogeneous whole by the starch which has amalgamated with the cooking liquid. Suddenly, dismayingly, all is lost. Your risotto has become heavy, stodgy. It is still perfectly eatable and probably tastes very good. It is just that its elegance and distinction have vanished.

Shellfish and fresh green vegetables are the two staple flavourings of the Venetian risotto. Both are used in astonishingly small quantity in proportion to the rice. Both make dishes of great finesse.

While it is vain to hope to reproduce an Adriatic shellfish dish unless the Adriatic coast is where you live, it does seem feasible to attempt a vegetable risotto cooked along the lines of the Venetian one, even though the vegetables will be different and the end-product possibly unfamiliar to a Venetian.

For 2: 150–180 g (5–6 oz) of Piedmontese Arborio rice, 75 g (2½2 oz) of butter, 2 tablespoons of grated Parmesan, 600–750 ml (1–1¼ pints) of water, 1 small onion, approx. 5 lettuce leaves, 1 leaf of a fennel bulb, 5 dried shrimps, 5 dried mushrooms, salt, nutmeg.

Use a 16-cm (2½-pint) heavy saucepan. Soak the shrimps and mushrooms in warm water for half an hour. Drain and cut very small. Shred the lettuce leaves and finely dice the fennel. Peel and chop the onion.

Melt 45 g (1½ oz) butter in the pan and cook the lettuce and fennel until soft. Lift out the vegetables, leaving behind the butter. Put in a little more butter if necessary and cook the onion for 1 minute until translucent. Add the rice, and stir it around until it glistens with butter. Pour in 450 ml (¾ pint) of boiling water and cook, uncovered, over medium heat until all the liquid is absorbed. It will take about 15 minutes.

When it begins to look dry, stir in the shrimps and mushrooms, 1 teaspoon of salt and another 150 ml (¼ pint) of boiling water. At this stage it needs watching. With a wooden fork, which doesn’t break the grains, stir the rice and taste to see how tender it is. The grains must retain a slight resistance and the risotto must be liquid.

Stir in the lettuce and fennel with the Parmesan cheese, a generous grating of nutmeg and the remaining butter.

GREEN VEGETABLE RISOTTO

For 4: 300–350 g (10–12 oz) of arborio rice, 2 shallots, 3 small courgettes, 1 bunch of watercress, 100 g (3½ oz) of butter, 1.2 litres (2 pints) of water, 3 tablespoons of grated Parmesan, nutmeg, salt.

Use an 18-cm (4-pint) heavy pan.

Peel the courgettes in alternate strips, slice lengthways into four pieces, then cut into tiny dice. Cook them in 30 g (1 oz) butter in a small pan until just soft. Clean the watercress, discard all cottony and ragged parts of the stalks, cook the remainder in 15 g (½ oz) butter for 1 minute, then chop. Melt another 45 g (1½ oz) butter in the heavy pan and cook the chopped shallots for 1 minute. Stir in the rice and add 600 ml (1 pint) of boiling water. Cook as described above.

The courgettes and watercress go in at the end; to reheat the watercress before adding to the risotto, put it into the pan with the courgettes. Finish the risotto with the Parmesan, remaining butter and a grating of nutmeg.

Note

Stock is not necessary for these risottos, but there should be plenty of grated Parmesan on the table for those who like it.

Unpublished, written 1970s

Excerpt from a letter to George Elliot,

17 February 1984

Last week we made it to Hiély in Avignon. I’m happy to say it’s still a lovely restaurant, the food is still good, the people charming, the service remarkable, the wine delicious and the atmosphere altogether right. None of that chilly ungenerous attitude of the place at Vézelay. At lunch the menu is 180Fr (now about £16). For that you get an hors d’oeuvre, some hot, some cold – I had pâté aux herbes, Jean had home-made nouilles with fish and a very delicious tomato coulis. Then she had a sauté of lamb and I had boned saddle of rabbit stuffed with its own liver and some bits of morille. Gratin dauphinois came with both. Then there were two enormous trays of local cheeses to choose from. Then an extraordinary array of ice creams, an amazing chocolate cake. All included. Service as well. Coffee at nearly £1 each was the only over-the-top item. But it
was
delicious coffee.

The wines were a white Lirac (Rhône) and a red Châteauneuf du Pape de l’année, en carafe, one of the most gorgeous wines I’ve drunk for a long time – 80Fr (say £7.00) for a 70cl carafe. So you see, I was really pleased to find it still so good, and so free of nouvelle cuisine affectation.

Here in Uzès we eat mostly vegetables, eggs (free range), local cheeses – quantities to choose from in the Saturday market, sheep’s milk, goat’s milk, cow’s milk – salads, the occasional corn-fed chicken roasted on Patrick’s electric spit, ditto the most beautiful fat red peppers from Spain (much the best way of doing them, if only I hadn’t given away my own Cannon
spit-roaster to Marion years ago). We buy blettes and those dog-bone shaped pumpkins, and sometimes sorrel, fresh fromage blanc, either cow’s or goat’s milk, and a rather remarkable confection called a tarte à la crème which is not a custard pie but a light yeast dough affair, the dimensions of a sponge cake, obviously sliced in half, filled with a very good sweet cream cheese mixture, for once not drowned in vanilla. This we buy from a woman in the market who sells good little farm cheeses and little raviolis filled with cream cheese and parsley.

Next door to the house is a boulangerie where apart from the usual baguettes and pains de ménage they make about five different kinds of biologique loaves – wholemeal bread – all of them light and
really
good. If I could buy just one at J de B’s Walton St bakery I wouldn’t have to make my own. The French have been very slow getting in on the wholefood business, but once they’ve cottoned on they’ve done it well. Even if what they produce isn’t strictly biologique by the standards of Cranks, it’s a vast deal more edible.

In the market we can buy about seven or eight kinds of olives, black and green. Even the newly-brined ones, but they’re very tough. There’s a good greenish extra-vierge olive oil too, but last week we went to an oil mill near Fontvieille (where Daudet’s windmill is, the Anne Hathaway cottage of Provence) and bought a litre, unfiltered – they don’t have a filter they said – about £3 .00. Very good. They were selling soap too, made for them on a basis of their residue. We bought some. It smells good but I haven’t tried it yet.

Mistress Margaret Dods

Christina Jane Johnstone, whose
Cook and Housewife’s Manual
, published in 1827 under the pseudonym of Mistress Margaret Dods, was the wife of John Johnstone, a Dunfermline schoolmaster who became editor and proprietor of the
Inverness Courier
and subsequently joint editor with his wife of the
Edinburgh Weekly Chronicle
. Mrs Johnstone took her pen name from Meg Dods, landlady of the Cleikum Inn in Auldtown of St Ronan’s, a character created by Sir Walter Scott in
St Ronan’s Well
. It was brave of Mrs Johnstone to use Meg’s
name; she is one of Sir Walter’s more rugged characters, raw-boned, hideous, with the manners of a fishwife and a shrewish way of dealing with any customers she might consider unworthy of the hospitality of her Inn. ‘Troop off wi’ ye to another public,’ she would screech, in a voice to be heard from the Kirk to the Castle of St Ronan’s.

The grisly exterior, however, concealed a heart of gold and a magic touch with the saucepans; a fierce pride in her kitchen was combined with a profound respect for the art of cooking; the excellence of her table was renowned and her cellar stocked with good wine.

Mrs Johnstone, in contrast, appears to have been an amiable and accomplished woman; De Quincey refers to her as practising the profession of writing with absolutely no sacrifice of feminine dignity; her cookery book was an instant success, and ran into ten editions during her lifetime.

It is especially in the preparation of the wonderful natural foods in which Scotland abounds, salmon, grouse, venison, and in the great national dishes such as haggis, cock-a-leekie, Friar’s chicken and sheep’s head broth that Mrs Johnstone, ‘Meg Dods’, stands supreme.

On the salting, curing and smoking of meat and fish as practised in Scotland, Mrs Johnstone is particularly interesting. Notes on salted mutton and goose as well as on hams, beef, sausages and a ‘Yule Mart or whole Bullock’, figure in the
Cook’s and Housewife’s Manual
. ‘Mutton, either ribs or breast’, says Mrs Johnstone, ‘may be salted and served boiled with roots, making at the same time potato soup, seasoned with parsley or celery.’ A dish called ‘Colliers roast’ was a leg of mutton salted for a week, roasted and served with mashed turnip or browned potatoes; in Caithness ‘geese are cured and smoked and are highly relishing. Smoked Solan geese are well known as contributing to the abundance of the Scottish breakfast.’