The Guardian | Saturday 14 October 2017
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One pan band Anna Jones makes easy suppers in a single vessel 1
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Still Waters On the Chez Panisse founder Roux the day Rachel Roddy’s bechamel bake Mellow yellow A lemon tart from Jeremy Lee
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The Guardian | Saturday 14 October 2017
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the modern cook
Pan solo Simple dinners made in a single pan are the essence of home cooking. Here the hearty heft of crisp butterbeans is lifted by citrus-laced kale, while beetroot, thyme and orange lend their earthy notes to a serving of orzo pasta
Anna Jones read a restaurant review this weekend in which the writer talked about the head chef being “the rarest of creatures”: a chef without ego. The idea of ego in food has come up in conversation a lot recently. It’s often thought to be what distinguishes home cooking from restaurant cooking, though there are exceptions: you’ll certainly find ego-driven cooks in home kitchens and the most gentle, generous cooks in restaurants. It’s had me thinking about what home cooking really means. What would be the most ego-less dish? A boiled egg? A bowl of cereal? Beans on toast? They all stem from a need to get food on the table for hungry people quickly, be that yourself or those you love. It’s an act of giving. And that’s the definition of home cooking that I’ve settled on. These dinners both come together in a single pan, and are ready, from the moment you start chopping or grating, in under half an hour. They make use
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of easy-to-find ingredients and leave little washing up. Most of all, they both bring the kind of flavour hit that makes you think they took longer to make than they did. I’m not sure I’ve quite managed ego-less cooking with them yet though; I still want to hear the hungry clatter of forks and spoons, the oohs and ahhs, the compliments to the chef … It’s a work in progress.
Crispy butterbeans with kale, parmesan and lemon A simple dinner. I eat this with a green salad and, if I am hungry, a slice of bread, toasted and rubbed with a little garlic and drizzled with olive oil. Vegans can easily leave out the parmesan.
Serves 4 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil 2 x 400g tins butter beans, drained 400g vine or cherry tomatoes 200g kale, washed, stems removed, roughly torn 50g walnuts, lightly toasted
2 garlic cloves, finely sliced Nutmeg, freshly grated The zest and juice of a lemon Salt Parmesan (I use a vegetarian one), for grating on top, optional Anna Jones is a chef, writer and author of A Modern Way to Eat and A Modern Way to Cook (Fourth Estate); annajones.co.uk; @we_are_food
1 Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan over a high heat. Add the beans in a single layer. Stir to coat the beans in the oil, then let them sit long enough to brown on one side – about 3-4 minutes – before turning to brown the other side for about the same length of time. The beans should be golden and a bit crunchy on the outside.
The Guardian | Saturday 14 October 2017
PHOTOGRAPHY EMMA LEE FOR THE GUARDIAN FOOD STYLING ANNA JONES WITH ANNA SHEPHERD PROP STYLING ANNA JONES
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2 Add the tomatoes and allow them to cook for a few minutes, or until they begin to break down. 3 Add a little more oil to the pan and allow it to heat a little. Add the kale and a pinch of salt to the pan, then cook for a couple of minutes, turning all the time until it is tender and the edges have crisped. 4 Stir in the walnuts and garlic, then wait 10 seconds and stir in a good grating of nutmeg. Wait another 10 seconds and stir in the lemon juice and zest. Remove from the heat. Serve with grated parmesan and some bread for a hearty meal.
One-pot orzo with beetroot, thyme and orange You can use any colour of beetroot you like here – I adore the deep magenta or the red ones, but yellow and pink work well too. Vegans can leave out the feta.
Serves 4 4 large beetroots, peeled and grated (prepared weight around 500g) 300g orzo pasta A small bunch of thyme 1 tsp salt 2 tbsp olive oil, plus more for finishing Zest of 1 small orange or clementine 100g feta cheese
Home cooking is an act of giving. That’s the definition I have settled on
4 handfuls rocket or other peppery leaves 1 Put the grated beetroots, pasta and picked thyme into the pan with the salt, 2 tbsp oil and 850ml water. Put the pan on a high heat, cover with a lid and bring to the boil. Simmer for 10 minutes, or until the pasta has cooked and the water has been absorbed. Stir regularly to prevent the pasta from catching on the bottom of the pan. 2 Spoon on to warm plates and finish with some orange zest, peppery leaves, a crumbling of feta and a good drizzle of olive oil.
The Guardian | Saturday 14 October 2017
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“We must understand the concept of flavour, of sustenance, and the sensual humanity of the table.” Elissa Altman on Alice Waters time of unapologetic excess when shoulder pads are massive, hair a three-foothigh fire hazard, and meals are served on gleaming black charger plates the size of hubcaps. I’m standing at the back of the original Dean & DeLuca in Manhattan’s SoHo, where I’m working as the cookbook department clerk. Early one morning, before the rush – the gallerist Mary Boone buying a $10 tomato, JeanMichel Basquiat trying to not fall into the chevre display – the front door blows open and a petite lady dragging a heavy, cast-iron Tuscan fireplace grill huffs and puffs her way down the aisle to where my boss and I are waiting. “I’m just back from Tuscany,” she says in a breathless pant, “and I’ve fallen in love with it! Can you find someone to make these over here?’ “Of course, Alice,” my boss says to this woman – who schlepped this behemoth thousands of miles because she loves the pure, dramatic carnality and elemental flavour of fire-roasted foods, and wants others to enjoy it as much as she does – even if their only live flame source is a suburban fireplace. Alice wants others to experience what she did on a lifechanging trip to France in the early 1960s: that single moment when the gears click into place, when something shifts, and the sensory act of cooking and eating and breaking bread with others will never be the same again. “Thank you,” she says, leaving the grill in at my boss’s feet. She floats down the other aisle, out the door, and is gone in a blur of muted silk crepe.
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Thirty years later, Alice Waters remains in constant motion; for almost half a century she has arguably done the heavy lifting for a nation that, when the doors of her restaurant Chez Panisse opened in Berkeley, California in August 1971, was drinking jugs of Mountain Burgundy and eating aerosol cheese. That Waters’ new memoir, Coming to My Senses, is dedicated not to her family but to 1960s activist and leader of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, Mario Savio, runs parallel to her commitment to a clear moral issue: not only should good food – honestly grown, picked at the height of its season, prepared simply, served beautifully, eaten slowly and convivially – be available to everyone, but we must recognise and support those who produce and purvey it: farmers, fisherman, ranchers, local growers, farmers’ markets, and Community Supported Agriculture. We must understand the concept of flavour, and sustenance, and the sensual humanity of the table. In America, which is built on supply and demand, speed, entitlement, and instant gratification, virtually nothing has been more revolutionary, challenging, or complicated, than saying: “No; there is another way.” As Savio implored the rioting students of Berkeley in 1964, Alice has “put her body upon the gears and upon the wheels” of an odious machine. And if she has not entirely stopped it, she has certainly altered its course. In every city in America, farmers’ markets abound; organics are widely available; small vegetable gardens
thrive from inner cities to suburban front lawns to the White House; the Edible Schoolyard Project, founded by Alice and the Chez Panisse Foundation in 1995 now exists in 33 countries. The chefs who have passed through the Chez Panisse kitchen include Deborah Madison, the late Judy Rodgers, David Tanis, Paul Bertolli, Joyce Goldstein, Jeremiah Tower, Jonathan Waxman, Mark Miller, Cal Peternell, Suzanne Goin, Steve Sullivan, and Russell Moore – and two Cook contributors, Claire Ptak and Samin Nosrat. All have gone on to write seminal cookbooks, open landmark restaurants and bakeries, and put their own mark on an ethos that has forever changed the way we think about food and the table. I never bought one of Alice’s Tuscan grills; I had no fireplace. What I did have was a small kitchen where I often cooked for my friends, hopelessly scouring the city for Meyer lemons because Alice said I should. After she left Dean & DeLuca that day, my boss gave me a stack of books: Elizabeth David’s A Book of Mediterranean Food, Richard Olney’s The French Menu Cookbook, Jane Grigson’s Good Things. “If you love Alice,” he said, “you’ll want to read these.” While having dinner at Chez Panisse this past summer – 30 years after my first encounter with her – I ordered a peach for dessert, served with nothing but a knife. Picked at the perfect moment, its flavour was explosive and almost lewdly mouth-filling, and its juices dribbled down my chin. I understood.
Elissa Altman is the author of the memoirs Treyf and Poor Man’s Feast, and writes the James Beard Award-winning blog of the same name; @elissa_altman
The Guardian | Saturday 14 October 2017
book extract
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Beauty is caring In her new book, Alice Waters describes how Montessori ideas about ‘learning by doing’ inspire her in everything from running a kitchen to her work on reforming schools. Awakening the senses, she says, creates a language of care
ike most people, I had no idea what I was going to do after I graduated. I was waitressing, and doing the Alice’s Restaurant column with my artist friend David Goines. I had my fantasy of a little French bistro, but it never felt like a real way to support myself. I was also finding out more about Montessori teaching. My sister Ellen’s friend Barb Carlitz was a Montessori teacher, and I was fascinated by the philosophy. I could never learn in the abstract, and Montessori was all about learning by doing. It felt like a reform movement, a hopeful way to enact change. I started interning at a Montessori school down the block from me on Francisco Street, and after about a year, I applied to the international Montessori training school in London, for a nine-month certification program. It was a big decision to go to London in October 1968, but I made the leap. The work wasn’t hard, but it was detailed and time-consuming. We had to learn puzzles and make scrapbooks. Montessori was also about handwriting, and I had a leg up in that department already, because David had been teaching me calligraphy. Writing longhand takes time – as Maria Montessori said, the hand is the instrument of the mind. You have to practice endlessly to get it right. I would do As over and over again, working on lined paper so I’d get the right proportions each time. I think the way you write to someone tells them how much you care about them. When all the senses are educated and empowered, Maria Montessori said, every child discovers something he or she can do that’s amazing. They each have something incredible to contribute. I’ve thought of that in the restaurant every day since it opened – that someone who’s not good here might be really good there. He or she just hasn’t found the right calling yet. Making things look and feel beautiful is important to Montessori pedagogy. The idea is to make the classroom so inviting that the kids come into it and immediately want to explore. In the same way later on, I wanted Chez Panisse to be enticing to
PHOTOGRAPHY BARRY J HOLMES FOR OBSERVER FOOD MONTHLY RIGHT KRISTIN PERERS FOOD AND PROP STYLING CLAIRE PTAK
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people from the moment they walked through the front door – I wanted to awaken all their senses. When we built the Edible Schoolyard kitchen in 1995 at Martin Luther King Jr Middle School in Berkeley, we made very conscious choices about everything we put in the room – just as Maria Montessori had, and just as Martine and Aunt Ina had done with their homes. We were given a low-slung, charmless portable building to work with, so we started by taking out all of the partitions to make one large room with as much natural light as possible. And then we got artists involved in the design. We made sure there were always flowers on the tables, and that all the knives and kitchen tools were laid out neatly, the vegetables and fruits of the moment arranged at the entrance. When the kids walked into the room, they knew that something special had been done for them. You don’t have to say a word – they just know it instantly, and they know they’re loved. In fact, the students would often come back later just to do their homework or play the old piano that we put in a corner. Beauty is the language of care.
▲ Coming to My Senses by Alice Waters (Hardie Grant) is available now
Alice Waters is a chef, author, food activist and the founder and owner of Chez Panisse Restaurant in Berkeley, California; chezpanisse.com
Back to when I was training, when I first arrived in Hampstead, I walked through the neighbourhood looking for a place to stay. I saw a lovely old brick house that had a turret and a plaque by the door that said: Mrs Wanda’s House for Girls. I knocked and asked the woman if she had any rooms to let. I was crushed when she said: no, it was full. “I’d love to live up there in that turret,” I told her. “I don’t want to rent that out because it doesn’t have any heating,” she said. But I told her it didn’t matter, so she showed it to me and I rented it for something like seven pounds a week. It had a minuscule bedroom, a little sitting room, and the tiniest kitchen you’ve ever seen. I could just barely stand in it. It had a small enamelled front stove – just two burners and a broiler, with no proper oven at all – and a sink. I’d often have little dinner parties, lots of French cooking, usually from Elizabeth David’s books – I steamed mussels, and I actually managed to make some half-decent tarts. It was very cold all that winter, and you had to bring the coin-operated electric space heater everywhere you went. I’d stand so close to it, that one night the whole back of my nightgown, a polyester thing, went up in flames. All of a sudden it just burned up and disappeared – one second it was there, and the next it wasn’t. That could have been the end of Mrs Wanda’s turret. I never imagined I’d meet Elizabeth David, but she did come to Chez Panisse much later, with the writer Gerald Asher. They were on their way to Yosemite, so I volunteered to assemble a picnic basket for their lunch. I went to my favourite antique shop and bought Early American glasses and dishes I knew she would appreciate: two ancient wineglasses, vintage linens and a patchwork quilt for the two of them to sit on. I spent way too much money, and it was heavy – especially with two bottles of wine! They had thought they were getting a bagged lunch, and this picnic basket was gigantic. But they loved it, and she took all the glasses and linens back to England.
The Guardian | Saturday 14 October 2017
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a kitchen in Rome
Bechamel is a cornerstone of cooking that invites variation. Our columnist’s early lessons in making choux buns at school are applied in this Tuscan bake with spinach, breadcrumbs and nutmeg
On the sauce
Rachel Roddy he most important thing about home economics was the basket. It had to be packed the night before, then carried to school and left in the Watts block kitchen-classroom, ready for the lesson with Mrs Carrington. My shopping basket was too big and too wide for any shopper, never mind a 12-year-old girl. While everyone else carried their neat, coffee-coloured shoppers, I lugged my sturdy one down the hill and through a graveyard, across the high street, then up another hill to school, the ingredients for scones or choux buns rolling around the basket like drunks on a boat. Despite my large basket – which caused me nearly as much anxiety as my big hair and sausage fingers – I liked home economics. I liked the smell, a mix of biscuits and bleach, having a stove of my own and things weighed out, and there was the promise of something to eat. I also liked Mrs Carrington – elegant and direct; a woman capable of managing a room of only-just teenagers with naked flames, flour, butter and milk. Why is it we remember certain details so clearly and others are a smudge? I can’t picture Mrs Carringon well, but I remember her exact shade of lipstick – reddy purple. I can’t picture the room, but I can visualise the window and cupboard handles; also the butter and flour roux, the colour of milky coffee, pulling away from the sides of the pan as it thickened and smelling like digestive biscuits. Then you added the milk to the roux – slowly, or your sauce would go lumpy – and no one wanted to be lumpy. I whisked as if my life depended on it. I can’t remember if that first panful was lumpy or not, or what we made with it, although I am
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assuming it was cauliflower cheese. I do remember making another roux a few weeks later and mine was singled out as “a good example” before being turned into choux buns, which I carried home in my basket and presented to my brother and sister like puffed-up trophies. For weeks, empowered by new skills and names, I treated, then tormented, my family with roux and bechamel, cauliflower cheese and choux buns. I still think of Mrs Carrington when I make white sauce – bechamel, or besciamella – which I do often for cauliflower cheese, even though I am the only one who likes it here. It’s also the basis for today’s baked spinach sformato. This is a recipe from Tuscany by way of Lori de Mori, from her useful and beautiful book Beaneaters and Bread Soup. A sformato means something taken out of a form, an umbrella name that permits many variations. This Tuscan version is rather like constructed creamed spinach – so a layer of well-seasoned spinach enriched with egg and scented with nutmeg, covered with a thick, duvet-like layer of bechamel seasoned with parmesan. Lining the tin thickly with breadcrumbs is important. It doesn’t just stop sticking but provides a crisp bottom, which is a nice contrast to the tender bake. This is a straightforward recipe, but like most good things that doesn’t mean instant and easy. Neither does it mean time-consuming and difficult – simply that some time and care is required when you shop; and for the bay milk to infuse the milk, for the spinach to cool, and for the bechamel to thicken (a good shortcut here is prepared bechamel). Finally, leave some time for the sformato to rest: it won’t cut if you are too hasty. If you serve this as a main course, then a salad is good company – mixed red and green leaves with a sharp dressing. It it also good with roast chicken or a piece of grilled meat. If you make it in a cake tin, it could be cooled and taken on a picnic – just cover it with clingfilm and pack snugly – in an appropriately sized basket.
Spinach and bechamel bake Adapted from a recipe by Lori de Mori.
Serves 4 as a main, 6 as a side 1.5kg spinach, washed in cold water 1 litre whole milk 1 bay leaf 80g butter, plus more for lining the dish 80g plain flour Salt and black pepper 3 large eggs, separated 50g parmesan Nutmeg Fine breadcrumbs, for dusting the tin 1 Set the oven to 180C/350F/gas 4. While still wet being washed, put the spinach in a large pan, then cover and put on a medium heat. After 3 minutes, stir, then continue cooking until the spinach has collapsed and is tender. 2 Drain the spinach. Once cool enough, squeeze it with your hands to eliminate as much water as possible. 3 Warm the milk and bay leaf together until almost boiling, then remove and sit for 5 minutes to infuse. 4 Heat the butter in a heavy-based pan. As soon as it starts to foam, whisk in the flour. Keep whisking steadily for 2 minutes, then pull from the heat. Add a little of the infused milk and whisk to a smooth paste. Return the pan to the heat, then add the remaining milk, whisking continuously until it almost boils. Season. Lower the heat and simmer, stirring and whisking frequently for about 10 minutes, or until the sauce is thick. 5 Chop the spinach. Beat the egg yolks with a fork, then stir into the spinach. Add 30g of the parmesan, 3 tbsp of bechamel, some salt and black pepper and a grating of nutmeg to taste. 6 In a clean dry bowl, whisk the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then fold this into spinach mixture. 7 Butter a 24cm baking dish or cake tin generously with butter, then dust with breadcrumbs. Spread the spinach mixture evenly over the breadcrumbs and top with the remaining bechamel. Scatter over the last of the parmesan. 8 Bake for 25 minutes, or until bubbling and golden. Rest for at least 15 minutes before serving.
Cook’s tip You could substitute half the spinach with chard or another leafy green. A handful of cooked peas is also a nice addition.
Rachel Roddy is a food writer based in Rome and won the Guild of Food Writers food writer and cookery writer awards for this column. Her new book, Two Kitchens (Headline Home) is out now; @rachelaliceroddy
PHOTOGRAPHY ELENA HEATHERWICK FOR THE GUARDIAN FOOD STYLING RACHEL RODDY WITH ELLIE MULLIGAN PROP STYLING ANNA WILKINS. PAN AND GLASSWARE BY CRANE COOKWARE
The Guardian | Saturday 14 October 2017
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A sformato means something taken out of a form – this is like constructed creamed spinach
The Guardian | Saturday 14 October 2017
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king of puddings
The glow of fresh lemons is a seduction like no other, whispering promises and sweet nothings of the pleasures to follow. Here, their juice and zest electrify a delicate tart – all that remains is to add a dollop of whipped cream
The heart of the tart
Jeremy Lee beautiful lemon – preferably with leaves attached and picked somewhere near Naples – has an almighty ability to cheer even the most frazzled of cooks. Depicted in every form imaginable, they are a fruit that inspires artists and, in more modern times, photographers, almost as much as they do chefs. Lemons have an allure unlike any other fruit. They have become vital to sparking up almost any dish with an elusive vigour that only they can provide. They feature in an abundance of dishes, savoury as well as sweet – from dressing a leafy salad to finishing a caper and black butter sauce one tips on a wing of charred skate for raie au beurre noir. And, when added to puddings, cakes, creams, custards and biscuits, a lemon is the perfect foil for any cloying sweetness. Like so many ingredients, it is hard to imagine a time when lemons were rare and precious fruits. That said, their cost is still almighty if it is the great, unwaxed lemons from the Amalfi you are buying. There are myriad others, but just as it is only the white truffles from Alba make the grade, so it is with these legendary lemons. It is not even the juice so much as the oils in the skin, when zested, that make the heart skip a beat. Worry not: I shall not ask you to spend the month’s rent on lemons, although sometimes it feels like that at Quo Vadis. Once we used to fill huge baskets with lemons in the reception. However, the heap seemed to diminish rather quickly – it appeared everyone thought the lemons so lovely they would take one or two
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home with them. This expense is not, thankfully, necessary with this lemon tart, a pudding that sparks the imagination and gathers attention like few others. Now, there are a great many recipes for lemon tart; indeed, there may be a real beauty when the lemons are in season in winter. But I like this recipe very much, for it retains the finely grated zest, which adds a curious curd-like quality – both homely and comforting. And, crucially, there is much lemony zip. Should you have a few pieces of candied lemon peel at hand, to add some joviality to the tart, by all means cut thin slices and strew them liberally around the edges. A bowl of whipped cream, as ever, seems somehow appropriate.
Lemon tart The pastry is best made the day before. Have ready a deep-fluted tart case, about 22cm wide by 2cm deep, with a removable base.
Serves 12 For the pastry 170g flour, plus more for rolling 100g cold unsalted butter, cubed A pinch of salt 1 tsp icing sugar 1 egg 1 tbsp cream For the lemon filling Zest and juice of 9 medium lemons 6 eggs 375g caster sugar 525g creme fraiche 6 tbsp rum 1 Set the oven to 170C/335F/gas 3½. Sift
Jeremy Lee is the chefproprietor of Quo Vadis restaurant in London; @jeremyleeqv
The Guardian | Saturday 14 October 2017
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Lemons spark up almost any dish with a vigour only they can provide
PHOTOGRAPHY OLA O SMIT FOR THE GUARDIAN FOOD STYLING JEREMY LEE WITH CHARLIE HIBBERT PROP STYLING ANNA WILKINS
the flour into a bowl. Cut the butter into small pieces. Drop the butter into the flour with a pinch of salt. Lightly work these together with your fingertips until a fine crumb forms, then add the icing sugar. 2 Beat the egg. Add the cream and stir well. Pour this into the pastry and knead into a dough. Tip on to a clean surface and knead lightly and deftly until the pastry is smooth. Wrap in clingfilm and refrigerate for at least an hour – preferably overnight. 3 It is vital the tart case does not leak, so clear the surfaces of all clutter before proceeding. On a lightly floured surface, gently roll out the pastry in a disc and line the tart case. Put the tart case in the fridge to settle for at least 30 minutes. Meanwhile, make two discs of greaseproof paper. Have ready a big bag of dried beans and/or rice. 4 Remove the tart from the fridge. Carefully line the tart case with the greaseproof paper. Pour the beans and or rice on top of the paper to fill the case. Put the tart case in the oven and bake for 15 minutes, or until the edge of the pastry is golden. Turn down the heat to 140C/275F/gas 1 and cook for a further 10 minutes. 5 Remove the tart case from the oven. With care, slowly lift the paper from the case. Keep the rice or beans for future baking endeavours. Return the tart case to the oven for 5 minutes more. (There may be cracks. Should these appear, remove the tart from the oven. Crack two egg whites into a bowl and keep the yolks as an excellent excuse for mayonnaise. Beat the whites with a fork until lightly frothed. Brush the inside of the tart case liberally with the beaten whites. Return the tart to the oven for 1 minute only. Remove and set to one side.) 6 Finely grate the zest from the lemons, then juice them. 7 Crack the eggs into a large bowl and beat them well. Add the sugar and beat well. Now add the creme fraiche, then the lemon juice, then the zest, and finally the rum, mixing all very well together. Let the lemon cream settle. 8 Spoon away any froth that settles upon the surface. Decant the lemon cream into a jug, put the tart case back in the oven, holding the shelf and tray out far enough to allow the cream to be poured from the jug into the tart. 9 Carefully push the shelf and filled tart back into the oven. Bake for 45 minutes, checking from time to time that the tart is not colouring. It should take an hour, but often takes 15 minutes, or even half an hour, longer. It is wise to be patient here. 10 When the tart is cooked and there be just the faintest wobble upon the surface when jiggled, remove from the oven and cool.
The Guardian | Saturday 14 October 2017
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a cook’s kitchen
Peruvian pride Endless aprons, vintage cookbooks and Maras salt are Martin Morales’s trusted tools …
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ix years ago, we sold our house to start Ceviche in Soho, and moved to this rental. We love it more than any other house we’ve ever lived in. It’s 100m from our kids’ schools, and the kitchen is exactly the style we like: the high ceilings, the picture rails, the old wooden floors, and that stove (1)! It reminds me of the open fireplaces I used for cooking in the Andes. It’s a coal and woodburning stove, which you can heat things on top of. I go to Peru several times a year to research recipes and meet chefs, and I bring back a lot of things. This is a fraction of my apron collection (2). Above my head is an amuleto (3) – an Andean good luck charm; and the hand-painted basket (4) is from the Huancayo region, given to me by a lady who runs a restaurant called La Tullpa. She taught me how to make an exquisite oyuco potato soup. I always bring back muna (5), an Andean herb that’s very calming as a tea; and mote corn (6), a type of giant kernel corn that is great for slow stews
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and soups. Tastewise, it’s somewhere between sweetcorn and potato. The kitchen is a place for creativity, fun and happiness; for family, neighbours and friends to come together. As a family we did a workshop with the Carga Maxima artist collective, in Lima. We each chose one of our family values and painted the words – I did “patience” (7)… Food and music are my biggest loves. We have speakers in every room of the house, a vintage turntable, Sonos, and digital radio. I live in deep west London, but listen to songs from the deep Andes. I often buy musically themed cooking utensils: tweezers that look like microphones, wooden spoons that look like drumsticks … And I have a big collection of music posters and original photography, mostly Peruvian rock and roll. The Mano Negra poster (8) is from a legendary concert from the 1980s. I’ve stopped DJing, but you can still find me behind the decks in Ceviche Old St on a Thursday night. I only
Martin Morales is an awardwinning Peruvian chef, cookbook author and restaurateur (and DJ); @ martinceviche
collect 7-inches (9) these days – all retro and analogue; warm crackly fun. I also collect cookbooks, both vintage and new. The Alice B Toklas (10) contains some crazy recipes – supposedly the first recipe for hashish cake. She was a real bohemian. I found this copy in at the fleamarket in Paris in Clignancourt, about 15 years ago. Weirdly, I was there again a few weeks ago. I walked in to an area packed with records, and on the turntable was playing Discoteca, a record I produced. I like to bring back little plates from my travels. I have my porridge every day in this beautifully handmade brown one (11) – I got it from Monica Alpaca’s restaurant, the picanteria La Nueva Palomino, in Arequipa. I had lunch at Jose Lujan’s restaurant in Cuzco a year ago, and he gave me this rock salt (12) from Maras. About 500 people work that part of the Sacred Valley, each on their own little plot, extracting salt by hand from the area where a small hot stream emerges from the earth. It’s such a poignant memento of our country.
PHOTOGRAPHY DAID LEVENE FOR THE GUARDIAN RIGHT DAVID LOFTUS FOOD STYLING PIP SPENCE PROP STYLING VIC ALLEN
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The Guardian | Saturday 14 October 2017
a cook’s bookkitchen extract
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... for making this Andean-style pumpkin casserole and sticky Oxapampa tart from his new cookbook Pumpkin casserole
1 medium-large banana, peeled 75g mascarpone 2 eggs
My great aunt Otilia used to make this locro de zapallo. It’s an Andina dish, but has variations using different meats all over South America.
For the topping 1 small green plantain, peeled and cut in half widthways 1 cinnamon stick 3 star anise ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
Serves 4-6 2 tbsp olive oil 1 onion, finely chopped 1 garlic clove, finely chopped 1 tbsp amarillo chilli paste (see below) ½ tsp dried oregano 500g pumpkin or butternut squash, peeled and cut into 4cm cubes 1 large potato, peeled and cut into 25mm cubes 250ml vegetable stock 50g broad beans 50g choclo corn kernels or sweetcorn kernels 50g peas 100ml single cream or evaporated milk 50g white quinoa, cooked 100g queso fresco or feta, crumbled A handful of flat-leaf parsley, chopped Salt and black pepper
For the butterscotch 60g light soft brown sugar ½ limo chilli or 2 medium-heat red chilli, deseeded and chopped 1 tsp ground ginger 2 tbsp freshly squeezed orange juice 6 black peppercorns 150g caster sugar 50g butter
For the chilli paste (makes about 100ml) 1 tbsp olive oil ¼ onion, finely chopped 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped 2 amarillo chillies, or 2 medium-heat red chillies and ½ yellow pepper, deseeded and finely chopped 1 First, make the chilli paste. Fry the onion over a medium heat for 7-8 minutes until soft, but not browned. Add the garlic and chilli, then fry for 2-3 minutes more. Season, then let it cool completely. Blitz to a smooth paste, then set aside until needed. 2 Saute the onion over a low heat for about 10 minutes, or until soft, then add the garlic, 1 tbsp of the chilli paste (store the remainder in the fridge for up to a week) and oregano. Stir for a 2-3 minutes, until the garlic has softened slightly. 3 Add the squash, potato and vegetable stock. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat, cover and simmer for 15 minutes until the squash and potato are tender and the liquid has reduced a little. 4 Add the broad beans, the corn kernels, and the peas, cover again and simmer for 5 minutes more until the broad beans are just tender. 5 Add the single cream or evaporated milk and stir to combine. Cook for a further 1-2 minutes, uncovered, to heat through. Season with salt and pepper. 6 Serve the stew in shallow bowls with the quinoa and the cheese on the side, and sprinkled with a little chopped parsley.
Oxapampa tart Historic Germanic migration to the Pasco region gave Peruvians this dramatic dessert. You can use bananas instead of the plantains.
▲ Andina: the Heart of Peruvian Food (Hardie Grant) is out now
Serves 6–8 230g plain flour 125g butter 25g muscovado sugar For the filling 15g butter 2 small or 1 large, ripe plantain, peeled and diced
1 Mix flour, butter and sugar together, then form into a soft pastry ball. Wrap in clingfilm and chill until needed. 2 To make the filling, melt the butter in a small frying pan over a low heat. Add the diced plantain and fry, stirring, for 4-5 minutes, or until they are lightly golden. Set aside to cool, then blitz to a puree along with the banana. Add the mascarpone and eggs. Blitz again to a smooth, pourable mixture. Set aside. 3 To make the topping, put the plantain halves in a saucepan and cover with water. Add the cinnamon and star anise. Bring to the boil on a high heat. Add the bicarbonate of soda, then simmer for 15 minutes, or until al dente. Drain and slice the plantain into 1cm-thick rings. Set aside. 4 To make the butterscotch, put the brown sugar, chilli, ginger, orange juice and peppercorns into a small saucepan with 10cm of water over a medium heat. Bring to the boil, then simmer very gently for 10 minutes, or until the sugar has dissolved and the liquid has reduced to a syrupy consistency. Strain the syrup into a bowl. Set aside. 5 Melt the caster sugar over a medium heat, resisting the urge to stir. When it has turned a light golden brown (about 6-7 minutes), reduce the heat, then add the butter. Whisk to a smooth sauce, then add in the spicy syrup. Whisk again to a rich caramel. Set aside. 6 Set the oven to 170C/335F/gas 3. Take a 23cm-wide nonstick ovenproof frying pan or shallow nonstick tin. Pour in the butterscotch, top with plantain slices and cover with the filling. 7 Roll out the pastry, then lay it on the filling. Tuck in the edges. Slit the dough to let the steam escape. Bake for 30 minutes, or until golden. Rest for 1 minute, then turn out the tart. Serve.