Globe trotting gourmet
Chicken Pie with a Difference
What do you cook when you’ve got an expert on Italian food coming to lunch? Antonio Maurizio Gaetani is the founder and inspiration behind Italia di Gusto, a deli that champions tip-top quality foods made by family run, non-industrial producers.
Non Italian, that’s what.
I made a recipe from Food of the Sun, by Alastair Little and Richard Whittington, a writing partnership that was one of my favourites in the 1990s. Richard is, alas, no longer with us; while Alastair has discovered there is more to life than being a celebrity chef (he’s far too nice) and runs the deli Tavola in Notting Hill.
Their Capon Salad from their Keep it Simple book is a dish I do regularly. But since that is an Italian inspired recipe (I imagined exclamations of ‘but this is not the traditional way to make it’), I went for their Chicken Chilli Saffron Pie with Fennel, Mushroom and Parmesan salad, a favourite from Deborah Madison’s perennially wonderful Greens cookbook. Then lime and ginger sorbet – something I made up, though I’m sure there are loads of iterations on this theme out there.
For 8 people
1 large free range chicken (minimum 1.9kg)
Poaching ingredients: outer celery sticks, parsley stalks, 2 bay leaves, 12 crushed black peppercorns, 2 teaspoons salt
1kg onions, thinly sliced
1 garlic clove, crushed
75g butter
50g plain flour
400ml chicken stock
500ml milk (approx)
2 red chillies, or cayenne to taste (easier heat control for guests of a nervous disposition)
12 strands of saffron, soaked in a little hot water
1 teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg
4 egg yolks
20 sheets of filo pastry (impossible to buy in Italy; puff pastry will also do)
melted butter for brushing pastry
Place the chicken in large saucepan, cover with water and add the poaching ingredients. Cover and bring to a simmer, skimming off any scummy foam as it bobs to the surface. Poach the chicken for around 50 minutes until it is cooked.
Remove the chicken and once it is cool enough to handle, strip the meat off the bones before returning these to the stockpot to continue to simmer for another 30 minutes.
While the stock is gently simmering, sauté the onions with the butter in a large heavy duty frying pan until soft and translucent. Stir in the flour. Strain the stock and add 400ml; save the rest for soup.
Once you’ve amalgamated the stock, add the milk. You want a sauce in the Goldilocks zone of being not too thin and not too thick to begin with. Cook for 20 minutes, by which time it should have thickened and reduced. Remove the sauce from the heat.
Chop the chicken into bite size pieces and add to the onion sauce. Season with salt. Then add cayenne to taste, or de-seed 2 chillies and slice very thinly before stirring them into the sauce along with the saffron liquid and nutmeg. Whisk the egg yolks and stir them into the mixture.
Heat the oven to 190C/gas mark 5. While it is heating up, prepare the pastry.
Take a baking dish approximately 38x23x8cms – I used my Pyrex – and brush melted butter over the base and sides.
Lay the first 10 sheets of filo pastry across the bottom of the dish, making sure they over lap while the edges hang over the side, brushing each sheet with butter as you go.
Spread the chicken mixture into the middle, fold the edges of the pastry over and then add the next 10 sheets of filo, buttering each as you go. It’s a bit like tucking in blankets on a bed.
Bake the pie for 35 to 40 minutes – the top should be a lovely deep golden brown. Leave to cool for 10 minutes before cutting into slices. It can also be served at room temperature.
PS It was a big success. Not Italian, but not so foreign as to frighten the horses. My American and Italian guests ate everything with gusto.
Fresh Kumquat Chutney
Kumquats, large olive size citrus fruits, appear in my local supermarket just before Christmas. They are not as easy to track down in the UK, but then the converse is true of Seville oranges – Italians aren’t remotely interested in them. They are, in fact, similar: inedible when raw, contain far too many pips to make them easy to prepare, but on the plus side they both make zippy ice creams – and chutneys.
I make Kumquat chutney most years to go with the Boxing Day cold goose or ham. I never have the time to follow a recipe: fruit, spices, sugar and vinegar are bunged into a saucepan and somehow chutney always turns out delicious. If the chutney is going to be served up the day of making it, I stir in fresh cranberries at the end instead of dried cherries. The latter give the chutney are darker look, so omit them if you fancy a clear orange colour.
Lunch in Paris at Taillevent
I don’t know about you, but I’m always chatting to strangers: in restaurants, on the plane, in a queue and, of course, at parties. Sometimes business cards are exchanged and promises to keep in touch are made; none of which usually ever come to anything.
A few weeks ago, though, at the Guild of Food Writer’s celebration of Drew Smith’s excellent book Oyster: A World History (held in the rather swish champagne and oyster bar at St Pancras station) several food writers thought it’d be a good idea to have lunch in Paris. The way one does. And I thought no more about it until Clarissa Hyman got in touch to say lets do 17th November. Drew, being ex editor of The Good Food Guide, chose our lunch destination – the Michelin starred Taillevent. Rosemary Stark made up the Adventuresome Foursome, while Eurostar and our credit cards make the whole thing possible.
I supplied the champagne for the journey and the others supplied loads of scurrilous gossip about famous chefs – the passengers around us were all curiously quiet – all of which is completely unrepeatable as I’d be done for libel. Read the rest of this entry »
Cookery Inspiration from Elizabeth David and Finca Buenvino
There’s a new book out: At Elizabeth David’s Table published by Michael Joseph. When I say new, that’s not strictly the case as it’s a compilation of David’s recipes and writing, with the addition of some fabulous photography by David Loftus. Even if you have some of Elizabeth David’s books already, go buy this one – it’s remarkable what font and photos can do for text, a bit like giving a room a fresh lick of paint.
The book is beside me and I have just opened it randomly to read the first sentence of an essay called Para Navidad: ‘It is the last day of October. Here in the south-eastern corner of Spain the afternoon is hazy and the sun is warm. The colours of the land are still those of late summer – roan, silver, lilac and ochre’.
How gorgeous is that? It’s exactly the same kind of day here in central Italy. Read the rest of this entry »
Pickled Tomatoes
At this time of year, tomatoes always remind me of the few months I spent working in Russia: Siberia to be exact. There, summer is short and it’s spent growing enough vegetables to see folk through the long, very cold winter. Having been brought up in Africa, I remember looking at the town thermometer bleeping minus 30C, and thinking that it couldn’t get any colder– but it did.
Potatoes were stored in specially constructed cellars – holes dug into the roadside verges, with drainpipes poking up through the soil to keep the spuds aerated. But most of the vegetables were pickled. Pickling was so popular, supermarkets stocked concentrated acetic acid for people to dilute into vinegar.
This picture is of pickled tomatoes, bottled by my friend Tatiana and her mother. They carefully stuff each fruit with a slither of garlic before packing them into sterilised jars with whole dill heads (including the seeds) and filled with vinegar. The sealed jars are then placed under a blanket in the sun to cook a little, before being stored in a cool place. They should be left for a couple of months before being eaten. They’re delicious, a treat borne out of necessity, and this picture reminds me to be grateful for Italy’s year round abundance. Which they bottle too, of course!
Down in southern Italy their version is the following: they halve and salt tomatoes, and leave them to dry in the sun. In the UK, there isn’t the right kind of sun – so you could put them on a baking try in a very low oven for two to three hours for a not very similar but it’ll do effect. Next soak them in some white wine vinegar for 30 minutes or so, then stuff them into sterilised jars with a couple of garlic cloves and herbs of your choice – mint or basil, for example – before adding sufficient extra virgin olive oil to ensure the tomatoes are sott’olio, under oil. Tap the jar to make sure all the air bubbles have escaped before sealing it. They can be eaten immediately, but last a couple of months.
Paris Stopover
What with strikes and attempted terrorist attacks at airports being a near yearly occurrence, the additional prospect of volcanic ash grounding everyone for the summer holidays settled it for my husband and me: we’d go by train to Italy. But Bill doesn’t like couchettes, so we decided to spend a night in Paris, take a day train through Switzerland to admire Lake Geneva and the Alps, and spend a second night in Bologna.
There’s a lot to be said for making the process of getting to your destination part of your holiday rather than something to be endured. And I wanted to see if we could eat well while training it.
St Pancras is a fab place to start a food oriented journey. In fact why can’t all railway stations be like it, full of attractive shops and restaurants you actually want to try, not get driven in by lack of choice or hunger. We ended up buying some rabbit and duck ‘sausage’ rolls and scotch eggs from the Peyton and Byrne bakery in case hunger struck on Eurostar. Which it did, of course.
Train journeys are no hardship: we are keen people watchers and our carriage companions didn’t disappoint. Bill sat next to a woman who at first sight seemed like an average granny, but there was something about the way she breathed through her plaque encrusted, gappy lower teeth, and how hid her food in a plastic bag and furtively ate crumbs when she thought no one was looking that had us speculating (afterwards of course, we aren’t bad mannered) whether she was within the first median on the bell curve of normality. Toupee watching is another game, one guy seemed to have a Velcro, Beetles circa 1960s version.
The old and new ways of eating
We stayed at the Mercure Hotel right next door to the Gare de Lyon for two reasons – it was a 1 minute walk to catch our Milan train the next day and we also wanted to try Le Train Bleu located over the station concourse. Now, the food is good but there are loads of restaurants serving better in Paris; none, however, can match the experience of eating at Le Train Bleu. It is like taking part in a theatre show.
Battalions of well-trained helpful waiters serve food from silver domed trolleys and trays within an extraordinary Belle Epoque setting with over 40 paintings of holiday destinations over its walls and ceilings. The web site says the restaurant is a “veritable initiation to travel”. I’d say invitation to travel; there can be no better way place to start your journey. Stick to traditional brasserie style dishes like grilled steak (which we did) and expect to pay a lot for it – there’s a premium for such old fashioned style.
