Risotto al pomodoro

Whilst in Italy recently I spent a morning at Alessandro Cappotto’s cookery school in the beautiful Villa Calini near Lake Iseo in the Franciacorta wine region. The kitchen garden alone is a delight. There had been a thunderstorm; when the sun came out every herb was singing.

First, under Alessandro’s eagle eye, I cooked stuffed ballotine of guinea fowl and generally indulged my Masterchef fantasies. If you’re ever feeling frustrated, resentful or angry, go and beat the crap out of some guinea-fowl breasts between greaseproof paper using a steel tool that looks a bit like an upside-down flat-bottomed mushroom. You’re welcome. 

Then we made a risotto – a tomato one – and this is how we did it.

First, we got our stock – a clear one made with only the classic Italian base ingredients of carrot, onion and celery – boiling, and toasted our Arborio rice alone in a dry pan for a few minutes. This technique was news to me; perhaps you know of it already. The rice doesn’t visibly colour, but smells really toasty. Then we added our first few ladlefuls of stock – it boils and spits and roils like hell, but you leave the thing absolutely alone, without stirring at all – I KNOW! – for 11 minutes. You can add a bit more stock if you like, if it’s getting dry. If you stir, I cannot be held responsible for the consequences. I'm assured they're ghastly. 

After the time has passed, add a ladleful or two of tomato passata – cooked up fresh ripe tomatoes with a little onion, olive oil, a little garlic, perhaps a herb or two, sieved. Some more stock if needed. From now on, you stir, but not too much. Keep going. When it’s done, nice and al dente and pretty runny, add just a spoonful or two of potato purée – not too much, as you don’t want a potatoey texture, just a creaminess. Taste and season.

Then chuck in a couple of tablespoonfuls of butter – he used unsalted but I don’t hold by the stuff – and a mound of grated Parmesan. Finish with some burrata, quenelles of roasted chopped aubergine, some black-olive dust (chop them and oven-dry), and spike the whole lot with fresh thyme leaves and flowers.

I tell you, this is alchemy. It’s like the Platonic ideal of Heinz tomato soup: so simple, yet so delicious. Try it, preferably with a glass of the delicious local Franciacorta sparkling wine. 

Coffee

On an average day, 87.6 per cent of my Instagram feed is coffee. There it is, with its latte art, muffin, gel nails and carefully chosen, intelligent but non-alienating paperback. It’s a pretty picture, and we’re all liking away like billy-oh. More than liking: In September, the BBC’s Lucy Hooker reported that we are almost at high-street-coffee saturation point. In the UK we now buy around 2.3 billion cups per year from coffee shops, according to market researchers Allegra.

My own relationship with the bean is complicated. I seem to have reached the age when I have to have a relationship with something rather than just eat or drink it. My ecosystem is as fragile as the Great Barrier Reef. One false move and I don’t sleep, I become anxious, puff, bloat, knock things over. Let’s not even get started on my relationship with alcohol, unless you’re volunteering to foot my therapy bills.

Watch a kid’s face when they first try coffee. But we valiantly push on, because those who don’t like it are perceived as infantile. Is it nice or is it not? Better have another sip... Sometimes it’s too strong; sometimes not strong enough. It’s often bitter. It can be tricky to get the roast just right. My God, for a simple morning pick-me-up, coffee is a high-maintenance drink. Recently I visited a friend who’s fallen hard for the stuff. The gateway drug was Illy and the kind of espresso machine you can buy in John Lewis. Now, she has settled on a machine that cost as much as most of my cars, a very fancy giant grinder (critical), and the Kata blend from Bradford-based specialist importers Limini – a mix of Brazilian and Guatemalan beans. Granted, it makes a very fine cup indeed: smooth and chocolatey. Now, though, coffee almost anywhere but home is a sore disappointment. Talk about a rod for your own back. What Oscar Wilde said about a cigarette is equally true of coffee: ‘It is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?’ It’s the extent to which coffee falls short of the ideal coffee of our imagination – or indeed of its actual smell – that keeps us hooked.

There’s also the sense of community. It’s a small touchstone we can reach for to make us feel we’re all on the same page. We walk to work clutching our paper cup – or now, hopefully, our re-useable one – and glance across the street at another human doing likewise, and smugly think, it’s OK: I am among my people. I will get through today.

But that’s just it. I’ve come to realise that coffee doesn’t help me get through my day, at all. It does the opposite. A few sips in, the anxiety starts to rise. It’s subtle. I’ll be looking at my computer screen, working away. Shit, I think – I never paid that bill for that school trip. Mid-sentence, I’ll flick to another window and start entering my password. But midway through paying the bill, I think, fuck, it’s Pierre’s birthday this week and I never got him those go-karting tickets. Flick. Flick, flick. Everything crowds in like the Furies. I sow and reap angst and irritation all around. And it doesn’t even end there: trifling problems haunt my waking nights. After an eight-hour session of duvet-wrestling, it’s all too tempting to have another coffee just to see if it’ll help me haul myself over the low bar of getting dressed and getting the kids to school.

I’d always thought of coffee as the chipper, cheery friend who always had my back, while alcohol was the wrong crowd, dangerous to know, luring me to the dark side, solipsism, moral turpitude, not giving a damn.  

It’s not that simple. If you get it just right – strength, flavour, volume – it can give you a nice buzz. I’ll give it that much. Overdo it by a grain, and this so-called friend will turn on you. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.

Veuve Clicquot Rosé 200

Veuve Clicquot has been celebrating the bicentenary of its first blended rosé, and last week I had the pleasure of participating in the festivities in Champagne.

Rosé champagne had never been my first choice. My main concern now is how to make up for lost time: my eyes have truly been opened to the deliciousness, the complexity and the seriousness of fine pink fizz.

Despite having tasted some blissful rosés, both still and sparkling (Dom Ruinart 2002 springs to mind), I’d somehow never taken them seriously. I think I’d felt that pink wine relies on assistance to complete the jigsaw: the blissful Provençal view; the spray of majolica roses; bare shoulders and 22 in the shade. I now realise I may have been suffering from a lack of imagination. Or just prejudice. I am not the only one.

Madame Clicquot, one of Champagne’s famed pioneering widows, suffered from no such shortcomings. In 1818 she had the bright idea of mixing red wine made from pinot noir grown at her prized Bouzy vineyards with her still white base wines. In doing so, she engendered a new champagne category and gave the marketing men the Valentine’s Day gift that keeps on giving; but the most hardened cynic couldn’t fail to have been moved by the wines I tasted last week.   

Our day in Reims began with a playful blending exercise at the wonderful private Hôtel du Marc in which chef de caves Dominique Demarville and his team invited us to consider the impact of vineyard provenance and varying proportions of red wines in Veuve Clicquot’s rosés. Next came apéros and lunch, hosted by CEO Jean-Marc Gallot and cooked by Joel Robuchon, accompanied by Veuve rosés, including vintage 2008, and a rare 1955 Bouzy red in magnum. All the wines and courses were exceptional (I tasted the best artichoke dish of my life and some stunning truffled blanquette de veau), but the main take-away for me was the multi-layered fascination of La Grande Dame Rosé 2006.

That evening, at the Manoir de Verzy, we were treated to music, dinner and Jeroboams of La Grande Dame of different vintages including my favourite, 1990. There was a surprise, in the form of an exquisite violet-scented 2009 Clos des Lambrays. But perhaps the day’s biggest privilege came in the form of a vertical tasting of Veuve Clicquot Cave Privée Rosé from 1990, 1989, 1985, 1979, 1978, 1961 and 1947, with guidance from Dominique and master sommelier Enrico Bernardo. The 1990, 1985 and 1947 were all sublime, but it was the 1978 that really got the synapses firing. The harvest that year, we were told, was late and ripe and the yield very low. But was that marmalade? Malt extract? Apricot kernel? Chestnut honey? All of the above, and more. This is why we taste wine: no other drink has such potential to tell a story, express its origins, and then confound all known facts with a stroke of magic. There is no objective correlative for an end product like this. 

Pink may have been all the rage in the fashion and lifestyle worlds last year, when Millennial Pink made big waves; but the colour has always been in style, and it always will be. It’s frivolous, sweet, charming, universally flattering – but tweak the CMYK proportions ever so little and it can be serious, strident and loud. It can be reticent or, as demonstrated by Mme Schiaparelli, it can shock. It can simper or it can shout (indeed, Veuve Clicquot have created a gift box for their NV rosé in the shape of a pink megaphone). It signals submission, but it also signals power. Now, so they say, we’ve moved on to lilac. But I believe that Pantone Ultra Violet will be a flash in the pan. Lilac simply does not give the same paradoxical thrill. It’s pretty, sure; it can even be mysterious – but powerful? Non. Give me pink – in my wardrobe, and in my glass.  

The roast beef of old England

Lebanese cuisine is just so delicious, and I love a good Thai as much as the next person. But sometimes I crave the nostalgia, the stateliness of traditional British fare. Oddly, it has come to feel more capriciously foreign than the mezze, tapas and shabu-shabu that affluent metro-dwellers now speak so fluently. But then, as the poet once said, the past is another country; and such is the pace of cultural assimilation in Insta-Britain. Against this backdrop, fine British food is comforting and elegiac, like reading an Evelyn Waugh novel whilst swathed in N. Peal cashmere.

Of course the standard line is that curry is the most traditional of British foods, but today, I am thinking of our indigenous fare. The roast fore rib, the devilled kidneys, the Dover sole and that most wondrous work of alchemy, toad in the hole. Our homegrown meat, fish and produce have been celebrated and elevated in the last two decades until, by now, they’re a pretty impressive and slick affair. But where to consume them? Try one of my pick of restaurants on Vanity Fair A-List: https://www.vanityfair.com/alist/2018/02/london-best-english-food

Tagine

About an hour’s drive south of Marrakech on the road to Ourika, towards the High Atlas mountains with their scrub-clad crags, gorges and red riverbeds, there’s a turning to a town called Aghmat. This was an important Berber city in medieval times. Now, it’s a sleepy place where stray dogs lope, widows lean on walking sticks, and boys hang out in groups, or lounge with feet up on car bumpers. They stare candidly as you drive through the dusty streets.

For years, my father and stepmother lived just outside this town. They had hoped to live out their days there, but it wasn’t to be. Lord knows what has happened to the house they built now: it may be inhabited by a local grandee, or by another Westerner, or abandoned to nature. Its walls were made of the local baked earth, which needs to be reapplied and repaired every year without fail, as this is a place where the elements – the winter frosts, lashing spring rain and parching July sun – are far mightier than the hand of man. I wonder if its olive groves and orange trees are now tangled with weeds, the pergola derelict, and the house, with its large, airy, blissfully shady rooms, invaded by the frogs that used to congregate in the reed-fringed swimming pool every evening to strike up their noisy serenade.

It’s a lost time. My way of experiencing Morocco now is via the kitchen: couscous aux sept légumes; a crisp, savoury-sweet bstilla; the wonderful breakfast pancakes known as msemen, eaten with fig jam; or a sticky pot-luck tagine slow-cooked in earthenware. Tagine – to the Western ear the very word evokes the stew’s glossy stickiness. It's a doddle to make. If you haven’t got the proper eponymous earthenware vessel, use enamelled cast iron, but don’t expect the same soul. Tagines are fit for purpose, adept at doing their work of reducing, concentrating and melding flavours. So at any rate, choose a pan with shallow sides and a large surface area to allow the proper evaporation. I use my Le Creuset shallow casserole for large quantities.

Number one in the tagine hall of fame is lamb with prunes and almonds. Everyone has a slightly different take: here is mine, humbly offered. More or less any cut of lamb is fine. In rural Morocco, it’s all the same – leg, scrag, head, tail: you pay the same price for one bit of the animal as for another.

Lamb and Prune Tagine

Ingredients

• 1kg diced lamb leg, shoulder or neck
• 1 large onion
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 stick celery, finely sliced
• 2 medium carrots, cut into large chunks
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• ½ tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1 handful of plain blanched almonds
• 750ml lamb or chicken stock
• A handful of pitted prunes
• 2tbsp lemon juice
• I small bunch coriander, leaves picked and stalks chopped
• 1 tbsp chopped mint

Method

Fry the onions, garlic, celery and carrots with the cumin, cinnamon, ginger, bay leaf and pepper on a low-medium heat until the onions are soft and translucent. Then remove these to a plate.

Turn the heat up slightly, add the diced lamb and brown evenly on all sides. You might want to do this in small batches to avoid crowding the pan. Towards the end of the meat cooking time, throw in your handful of almonds.

Return the onion mixture to the pan, pour in the stock and add the prunes, fruit spread, lemon juice and coriander stalks. Season generously. Bring back to the boil, then turn the heat down. Simmer uncovered for 30 mins, then cover and simmer for a further hour and a half. More, if you like. Sometimes I put the tagine in the oven and forget about it for a while. Or try to – it smells maddeningly good.

Check the seasoning, adding a little more salt and lemon if it’s a touch too sweet (though remember, like many Moroccan dishes, it’s supposed to be sweetish). Serve, scattered with the chopped mint and coriander leaves, with wholewheat couscous or bulgur wheat soaked (or cooked, in the case of the bulgur) in stock, drizzled with olive oil and scattered with a handful of toasted pine nuts.

Ourika.

Serves 4

Where have all the recipes gone?

I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling a little fed up of being lectured by my cookbooks. Yes, yes, I know that since Sir Tim Berners-Lee came up with his Internet wheeze, cookbooks stopped being merely a resource for recipes. They’re now more of a Sunday morning browse, more dipped in and out of than a chip-and-dip bowl of hummus at a suburban soirée. But page upon page of photographs of the restaurant, entire spreads of beautiful graphics (and I speak as someone who appreciates a beautiful graphic as much as the next person), and hectoring about the quality of one’s meat—now there I draw the line. Most of these books have a fairly self-selecting audience of those who already care about the quality of their meat. I’d like a few more recipes, please. Hawksmoor At Home, for example, doesn’t get going on the recipes until page 62. I’m not counting Steak in Butter, though others might. There are frontispieces, backispieces, quirky little illustrations, rants about animal welfare, educational spreads regarding cuts of meat. It’s not to say that those things aren’t important. They are. And I’m not a slave to recipes: I am a pretty confident and inventive cook when left to my own devices. But if I buy a recipe book, I want recipes.

Hawksmoor are laudably donating all proceeds (not profits, mark you) from their book to the charity Action Against Hunger – and they don’t trumpet this – which does admittedly make all this a good deal easier to swallow. But I hanker after the kind of cookbook that told you how to make an amazing dish out of a tin of tomatoes and a few cupboard-scrapings. One thing I do absolutely hold by is the idea that if you want to buy cheap meat, you should buy cheap cuts, not cheaply reared meat. The farming revolution needs to happen from the bottom up. (And you can be damn sure that it will be televised.)

A taste of Wales

I wrote a little thing for the Vanity Fair A-List the other day on the Welsh influence that's being felt in London restaurant kitchens. There may be leeks; there may be none. Exciting times for a country that has long furnished larders with the best quality makings. Find it (and other food and drink musings) here:

http://alist.vanityfair.co.uk/a-taste-of-wales-15836/

Salon Finish

Today got off to a rather good start. I had the pleasure of a very special tasting with Corney & Barrow at Galvin at Windows. From the 28th floor of the Hilton on Park Lane, London was looking dashing. I have a soft spot for view bars, with their whiff of carefree New York nights. On the table, we had six champagnes: four from Delamotte and two from its sister, the recherché vintage-only producer Salon. These hail from the Côte des Blancs, so Chardonnay was the point of the day. The standout for me from the Delamottes (NV, Rosé NV, Blanc de Blancs 2007 and Blanc de Blancs NV) was the latter. It had honeysuckle on the nose, white peach flavours perfectly balancing its high acidity, and real delicacy of composition. Charming. The Salons were something else - especially the 1997, which seemed but a distant second cousin thrice removed of most grande marque NVs. Complex and alluring, this silken-textured liquid held walnut, brandy butter, brioche-and-marmalade and oxidative caramel notes. Don't go near it if you want a celebration champagne that won't steal your occasion's thunder. This is serious stuff that demands attention, thought, and deference. It needs to accompany fine cooking. It's deep stuff. Almost as deep as its devotees' pockets. 

Versos 1891: The Cask of Amontillado

I'll stick my neck out here and say that I love a glass of sherry more than the next person, and have been delighted to witness its progression from fusty to fierce. So it was with a mixture of excitement and dismay that I read about the release of an Amontillado costing £8,000 a bottle... Vanity Fair A-List

In with the Noyau

Home-infused spirits are always a good wheeze, but in my experience, with the exception of sloe gin (which I have adored ever since I was presented with a tiny liqueur-glassful at the age of seven by my grandparents), tend to find their way to the novelty corner of the drinks cabinet. This weekend, though, I was introduced by old friends to one that more than holds its own in the front tier: a beech-leaf noyau. 

There is something so irresistibly Squirrel Nutkin about a beech liqueur. I'm thinking warm autumn evenings sipping the stuff whilst sitting around a tree stump playing ninepins with crab apples and green fir-cones (pastis and pétanque are so over). 'Noyau' is French for kernel, but it's also a liqueur made by steeping plants in spirits. A beech-leaf noyau might involve a few hefty handfuls of fresh young leaves in a jar with gin, brandy and sugar syrup. Macerate for a few weeks, then strain. It tastes delicate, vegetal, sweet (but not too much), and unmistakably of woodland. If it's very important to you to remain etymologically correct, I feel confident that, come September, this would be delightful made with beech nuts (which are delicious), too, but please don't quote me. Serendipity is what these foraged things are all about.