Cooking for Men
Tuna Sandwich Filling
High summer here in Italy. When the temperature indoors goes above 30C, I cease to be interesting in cooking. And this has been the case for the last fortnight. Not that I’m complaining, but it’s been a question of rustling up meals to feed the masses while spending minimal time over a hot stove – or even a coolish granite counter.
Tinned tuna to the rescue.
I don’t much like tinned tuna heated up – it’s definitely a salad or sandwich (or vitello tonnata, see previous post) option. And this sandwich filling harks back to the 1970s, originally from a book called ‘Freeze Now, Dine Later’, though I always call it Jo’s Mum’s Tuna, Jo being my best friend since school days. It was called Oriental Tuna, and includes an unlikely mix of soy sauce and curry powder – I think these days cooks wouldn’t mix up cuisines with quite the same élan.
For every 200g tin of tuna, yellow fin for preference (apparently it’s about the only variety of tuna that’s not on the verge of extinction, never mind the dolphins-caught-in-nets headache) mash the fish, drained of oil or water, with the following:
2 heaped dessertspoons Hellman’s mayonnaise
2 teaspoons dark brown soy sauce
1 level teaspoon curry powder (I used Sharwood’s Medium)
1/2 spring onion, finely sliced (optional, depending on children’s tastes)
1 slice inner celery finely diced or 3 water chestnuts, diced (just for crunch) – equivalent to one level tablespoon
Pile onto warm toast and top with sliced tomatoes. Goes excellently with a (large) glass of very chilled Peroni lager. Retire for a siesta afterwards.
Smoking and Curing Course
I have been wandering around the house trying to find a suitable spot to air dry some bacon. It turns out to be more of a challenge than I first thought, since the perfect place should be breezy, cool, not in direct sunlight, and fly free. Our large windowed house is south facing and overlooks farmland; and I’ve noticed the merest suggestion of sunshine brings flies out of hibernation in winter.
This urge to make bacon is a result of going on a smoking and curing course at the School of Artisan Food on the Welbeck Estate in Nottinghamshire. If you are in any way serious about meat then think about signing up for one of their butchery courses. It was a Christmas present from my beloved and he came along too – and has been so enthused by the experience he wants to go on one of their bakery weekends. He won’t be taking up butchery in a big way as badly arthritic fingers and chilled hunks of pig aren’t the best of combinations, but he still found it fascinating. Read the rest of this entry »
Mele con Gorgonzola al Forno
My pal Lisa Taruschio has been raving about the food served at Il Cacciatore in Muccia. ‘You must try the mushroom soup! It’s to die for. And oh my god their baked apples with Gorgonzola…’
I’m currently in the wrong country and liked the sound of the apples. It’s in the Italian tradition of mixing cheese with something sweet: aged pecorino dunked into honey, pears with Parmesan. What is more, they are so easy to do it isn’t really a recipe:
Preheat at oven to 180C. While it’s warming up, core crisp, sweet flavoured apples – I used Cox’s – and stuff them with blue cheese; in the absence of gorgonzola, I used Cashel Blue because the Neals Yard Dairy is round the corner from me. Pop them in some foil, dribble a little olive oil over them, loosely seal the foil and place the package on a baking tray. Bake for around 45 minutes. Lisa says they are served with honey and toasted walnuts. But I thought them rather good as they were.
In Italy, these apples are contorni, a side dish, probably served alongside roast cinghiale, wild boar. Boar is a tad tricky to find in central London, and I ended up eating them with spiced sausage patties.
The Telegraph recently did a piece on Madhur Jaffrey’s latest book Curry Easy. And her recipe has gone into my top 10 of easy midweek suppers. It’s huge hit with my husband, thank you Madhur (I bought the book on the back of this recipe). I use decent free range sausages, stripped of their skins for the minced pork, and I don’t bother chilling the patty mixture. Basically you just mush up sausage meat with garam masala, chilli, fresh coriander, and minced onion; tweak golf ball size chunks off the mixture and pat into a disc shape before frying them in oil. All you need with this is a green salad.
Delish: an Anglo Indian Italian supper.
Smoked Haddock Risotto
Billy, my husband, by and large eats what I put in front of him. He thinks he’s got more adventurous since meeting me, but there’s a surprising list of ingredients and dishes he still won’t eat: this includes all offal (obviously), pumpkin, beetroot, apricots, bananas showing any hint of ripeness, and he is bolshy about salad leaves, particularly pea tops.
Even though he’s not interested in food shopping he does go out and buy a brand of ‘cream’ ‘Italian’ salad dressing, the kind that’s full of Es and makes orang-utans homeless in Sumatra thanks to the palm oil lurking in its formulation. Even though I throw it away at regular intervals, it keeps reappearing in the fridge. Opened. I’ve turned a blind eye to this habit (his not mine) until now. Read the rest of this entry »
Pork and Chili Stew from Abruzzo, sort of
Just when you think summer has arrived the temperature drops 10 degrees and we’re back to grey skies. This stew is ideal for cool spring weather noshing; actually we have it year round, as it is now established as one of my ‘when inspiration fails to strike’ dishes – and it is one of my husband’s favourites.
I first came across this recipe in Joyce Goldstein’s excellent book Italian Slow and Savoury. In her introduction she says it is from Abruzzo; the use of chili and apple together didn’t seem very Italian to me so I had a look through some of my cookery books from the 1970s. In Ada Boni’s Italian Regional Cooking (Ada is one of the Italian cookery writers I most admire along with Anna del Conte) and in the chapter on Abruzzo was ‘ndocca ’ndocca : trotters, ears, snout and cheek are soaked in acidulated water overnight and then simmered with chili, garlic, bay leaves, rosemary and tomato paste for about 4 hours. Read the rest of this entry »
Sausage and Butterbean Sauté
“It’ll Do” suppers are the norm in my household, more commonly referred to as Splodge number – whatever figure comes into my head. Perhaps are more old fashioned word to describe this kind of a supper is a Pottage.
A Splodge is usually brownish in colour and not particularly beguiling to look at; it must use as few pots and pans as possible (to save on washing up); & is a never to be repeated one-off as there’s no recipe and I tend to use leftovers and whatever is to hand. Splodges have to taste good, though, otherwise Billy grumbles. Oh, that has reminded me of another characteristic – these dishes cannot contain parsnips, squash, or beetroot – vegetables he loathes, but I adore. Or swede, that’s my pet hate: boarding school catering has a lot to answer for and swede was always watery, lumpy and served with a gristle laden stew. God it was rank. If you ever spot a medusa haired woman spitting out vegetable soup in disgust, it’ll be me having detected a trace of swede lurking in the mixture.
But back to Splodges. We’d had a roast chicken on Sunday, but I hadn’t got round to making stock – which usually signals a risotto of some kind. But I did have some pork and onion marmalade sausages lurking in the fridge (free range natch) so I stripped off their skins, nipped the meat into balls and fried them up with diced red onion. I deglazed the pan with some dry Marsala wine, added a tin of butter beans and some leftover onion gravy, let it all simmer down for a few minutes, then served it with stir-fried finely shredded savoy cabbage with garlic. I think the killer ingredient was the Marsala, as its residual sweetness and warmth rounded out the other flavours nicely.
“Claggy”, sniffed Billy – I suppose it did look like spadeful of ploughed earth – but he had seconds.
