One Fat Man

Pimento Cheese for St. Patrick's Day Aftermath

Tomorrow is St Patrick’s Day. That great excuse to let-up on the Lenten observances. St Patrick is the patron of Ireland and the day will be full of lots of Guinness and whisky-drinking, I'm sure. I’ve never really engaged much with St Patrick’s Day as I’m not Irish, but I applaud drinking for the saints, there's something deeply Catholic about that. When thinking of a suitable thing to serve for St Patrick's Day I thought of something that would work well with drinking. My mind instantly went to the great Southern delicacy of Pimento Cheese (pronounced puh-meh-nuh cheese), which I just so happen to associate with not only a Patricia (Patsy, to be precise, reigning Queen of Pimento Cheese) but also with a Patrick (her grandson, and heir to the Pimento Cheese Crown). Perfect for St Patrick’s Day!

You will need:

250 grams/8 oz mild cheddar cheese (you want cheap American cheese, sorry but you do, and that’s hard to get in England. Cheap cheddar or Red Leicester should work)

4 oz jarred pimento peppers in oil, chopped finely

Quite a lot of mayonnaise (Hellmans, and not 'light')

Method:

Let the cheese come to room temperature and then grate it into a bowl. Add the pimentos and several tablespoons of mayonnaise. Mix it up, trying to mash it all together. Stir in some of the oil from the pimentos. This is really a matter of trial and error. You want a fairly loose consistency, and the cheese should start to form a sticky, spreadable sort of mess.

It sounds disgusting, I know, but it’s so good. Leave it overnight in the fridge and be sure to get it out an hour or so before eating so it can come up to room temperature.

Eat in sandwiches, on crackers, in a grilled sandwich...

Serve with a hangover.

Panzanella for Our Lady's Birthday

In Florence on 7th September the streets are lined with people in procession, heading towards Santissima Annunziata with paper lanterns. Summer is breathing its last breaths, and in the pale Tuscan moonlight this yearly pilgrimage is completed with great festivity. Mummers and minstrels line the piazzas and vendors peddle victuals aplenty. Children run through the streets chasing the paper lanterns that glow in myriad colours suspended in the air. There is a surprising hush, as they await Benediction with humble awe...

I hope I'm painting a nice picture for you. Why is all this going on? It's going on because it's the Vigil of Our Lady's Birthday. On the following day people go to the Duomo - dedicated to Our Lady of the Flower - and there is a big market and people eat and drink and generally have a jolly time. I've never actually been, so this description could be entirely wrong, but I've read about it several times and always thought it sounded as if it was my sort of gig. I suspect, given the nature of its festivals and the time of year, that it's something of a harvest feast. The good food is in, the sun is beginning to ebb away. Time to party and for man to make his own light to serve him through the winter months to come.

Time also to give thanks to the great Queen of the harvest, who at Assumption heralded its good fruits, and who now begins to draw it to a close. Naturally, my imaginings go towards what the Florentines might be eating at this time of year. I've alighted on that great Tuscan salad, the Panzanella, made with stale bread and overripe tomatoes... as I'm sure a lot of both are knocking about at this time of year and need using up.

Panzanella is very simple, tomatoes, stale bread, onion, some herbs, oil, vinegar... let it be with its thoughts for a bit and then enjoy. I tend to be rather English about it and add all sorts of things that would doubtless upset traditionalists (Florentines)... things like yellow tomatoes, a few sun-dried tomatoes, maybe even an olive or two. Anything you fancy.

Salt the tomatoes a little - really only a little, I've known people to over salt with disastrous consequences - to get the juices flowing. Put the tomatoes in a big bowl with chunks of stale Italian bread, torn up basil, finely sliced red onion, and the other good things. Leave it to sit for at least half an hour at room temperature, and every now and then stir it up to be sure the juices go into the bread. Do this gently, so the bread at least stays in chunks. Mix it all up again just before serving and dish out. If you're me, or a kindred spirit of mine, garnish it with a hard-boiled quail's egg. Because everyone loves quail's eggs...

Scallops and Bacon Simple Pilgrim Style - St James, 25th July

St James is traditionally associated with shellfish. The greatest sign of this is the scallop shell the pilgrims traditionally brought back from Santiago to prove that they'd completed the 'camino'. This shell has now become a general emblem of pilgrimage, a sign that someone is on a journey, or has completed one. Indeed, perhaps we should all wear one of the things permanently, for what is life but a pilgrimage? But enough of such cliches...

James' association with the scallop comes from the legend that when his tomb was being moved from Judea to Galicia by his disciples - for no apparent reason save to set up a lucrative shrine in Spain - they were shipwrecked and James' coffin emerged out of the water absolutely fine, but covered in scallop shells. These shells are of course a common sight on Galician beaches and probably struck many a pilgrim drying off after taking a dip as a nice thing to take home for the wife, or even as a useful thing to use as a cup, bowl or sundry utensil, on the journey home.

In Chambers' Book of Days (Edinburgh, 1868) there is a jolly extract from Erasmus' Pilgrimages which gives an account of the scallop shell. Someone meets a pilgrim (who is clearly not much different from the average package tourist) and the dialogue is thus:

'What country has sent you safely back to us, covered with shells, laden with tin and leaden images, and adorned with straw necklaces, while your arms display a row of serpents' eggs'?'

'I have been to St. James of Compostella,' replies the pilgrim.

'What answer did St. James give to your professions?'

'None; but he was seen to smile, and nod his head, when I offered my presents; and then held out to me this imbricated shell.'

'Why that shell rather than any other kind?'

'Because the adjacent sea abounds in them.'

The pilgrims probably ate the scallops too, abounding as they did in the adjacent sea and in season just in time for St James' feast on 25th July.

Indeed, queen scallops are perfectly in season in the UK at the moment, and so what better than a simple recipe for scallops and bacon? This is one lily that really doesn't need gilding.

Your most important ingredient is a cast iron skillet. Fry strips of good smoked streaky bacon in the skillet, starting on a moderate heat. When the bacon is just starting to crisp set it aside. Fry the scallops in the bacon fat for a couple of minutes, adding a little smoked paprika. Put the scallops on a serving plate, and give the bacon a final frazzle in the pan on high. Add the bacon to the plate and pop on some chopped fresh chilli, and coriander. Serve as a sharing starter... or fry up on a camp stove when stopped for the night on a pilgrimage.

Of course, this year the feast of St James is a Friday - which I didn't think about when preparing this recipe a couple of weeks in advance of blogging - so you could either leave the bacon out or ignore this recipe entirely and go and eat an oyster... Because even though there is no 'r'  in the month there is an old proverb which runs that 'whoever eats and oyster on St James' day will never want for money'. I'm certainly up for testing that one out.

Anti-modernist Casunziei (beetroot ravioli) for Pope St. Pius X - 21st August.

Pius the X was a legend. He was a great man and a great Pope, known for his simple life, a line in his will reads ‘I was born poor, I have lived in poverty, and I wish to die poor’. The conclave that elected him Pope was a rather drawn out affair, and he wasn’t the favourite. Indeed the favourite, Mariano Rampolla, was vetoed by Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary in the last use of of the Jus exclusivae – the right to veto a candidate for the papacy that several catholic monarchs held. Clearly the Holy Spirit was working through FJI as it gave us one of the greatest popes of modern times.

Pius was known for being anti-modernist, he made priests swear allegiance to the ‘Anti-Modernist Oath’ which was against dodgy new ideas interfering with the Church’s teaching, particularly it stood for the God’s ability to act in history, and God's revelation through the Church. It was against scepticism and relativism. However, Pius was not against change and he was a great reformer, particularly of the liturgy. It was Pius X who promoted regular communion for the laity – Holy Communion being the ‘quickest and shortest route to heaven’. It was Pius who reformed the breviary and encouraged people to pray the Divine Office. He also brought about a return to the simpler use of chant rather than frilly Baroque compositions. He was a simple man, the son of the postman from Riese in the Veneto region of Italy, where the food is wholesome and hearty. One of the specialities of this region is casunziei. These are beetroot ravioli served with cheese, melted butter and poppy seeds.

Pasta is jolly easy to make, but it is time-consuming. The ingredients are simple:

For the pasta:

Eggs, very fresh

00 flour, 4 oz per egg

Salt – half a teaspoon per egg

A little olive oil

 

For the filling:

About 4oz cooked beetroot – NOT in vinegar, but in water

A tub of ricotta cheese

Salt

Pepper

Some cooked potatoes – one big one, or a few new potatoes

I read all the recipes I could find for the filling and this seemed the best compromise. Blend all these ingredients together. There you have it.

For the sauce:

A good knob of butter per person

Grated hard Italian cheese

Poppy seeds

 

Method:

Two eggs is about right for enough ravioli for four. I made a double quantity and froze the other half of the dough. I’ll make tagliatelle with it later.

Mix the salt in with the flour, then make a well with the flour, crack the eggs into it, drizzle a little oil, get stuck in with your hands and make a dough. Knead it until it is light and stringy. If it’s too wet add more flour, too dry add a little water.

Once you have a nice ball of smooth but slightly sticky dough wrap it in cling film and put in the fridge for 15 minutes.

** during this 15 minutes you can blend all the ingredients for the filling together**

Set up your pasta machine. Cut the dough in half (based on two egg dough) and flatten it a bit. Feed through the machine according to the instructions. Basically you need to feed it through folding in half each time until it’s going through the machine on the narrowest setting and you have a nice long strip of translucent pasta.

 
Lay the strip on a floured surface. Cut circles with a medium sized round biscuit cutter, or the top of a glass. Take each circle, fill with a teaspoon of the filling, fold in half and seal with a fork. Lay each raviolo on a floured plate or baking tray with space around it. This dough is sticky and if you’re not careful they will stick together or to the plate and the pasta will split and be ruined.

When finished you can either cook the lot or open freeze some on trays. May sure they’re not stuck to the tray or each other before you freeze them and once frozen transfer to boxes/bags.

To cook the ravioli and make the sauce have two pans ready, one with well-salted and oiled water for the pasta, the other with melted butter in it for the sauce.

Cook the ravioli for three minutes in boiling water. Drain and pour into the melted butter, stir well, grate on cheese and sprinkle with poppy seeds. A perfect anti-modernist sort of dish for a wonderful pope.

PS Whilst these are perfectly nice, most other forms of ravioli are nicer than beetroot ravioli. So perhaps don't make these unless you're really desperate to sample traditional Northern Italian peasant food. 

Pea, Broad Bean and Watercress Soup for Bernard of Clairvaux - 20th August

 

Bernard of Clairvaux was a Cistercian, and arguably the most important figure in the Church in the 12th Century. His writings are numerous and his importance in the rhythms of modern monasticism impossible to quantify. One of his greatest gifts to the Church was his focus on the importance of Lectio Divina. He founded Clairvaux Abbey, which was not an easy task, especially not in terms of food. The land was poor and the monks often found themselves having to scrabble about trying to find food. This, mixed with Bernard's fondness for a strict Cistercian diet, must have resulted in a lot of watery soup. This recipe is not a watery soup, but a watercress soup... and is filled with the abundant British produce of late summer - peas and broad beans in their pods, new potatoes and sweet peppery watercress.

One white onion

A few cloves of garlic

A handful of new potatoes - chopped roughly

1/2 lb of peas taken from the pods

1/4 lb broad beans taken from their pods and skinned

A couple of very big handfuls of watercress

Chicken or vegetable stock (I used a bag of chicken stock from my store of it in the freezer)

A few good sprigs of mint

A couple of dollops of creme fraiche

Olive oil

Water

Extra water or milk to taste

A few additional sprigs of watercress to garnish

An egg (perhaps).

Chop the onion finely and fry with the garlic (which can be simply skinned and cut in half). When the onion is translucent add the peas, beans and potatoes. Stir around in the oil. Now add the chicken stock and enough water to cover. Bring to the boil. Simmer for about fifteen minutes. Now add the watercress and minute and cook for another fifteen to twenty minutes.

Now remove from the heat and leave to cool. Once cool blend and then reheat however much you want to serve, stirring in additional water or milk to taste (this depends upon how thick you want it to be). At the last minute stir in some creme fraiche (or double cream - but actually I think the c.f. goes better with the watercress). Serve with some watercress on top and a few hunks of soda bread.

Note: in the interests of full disclosure I should say that I served this with a poached egg dropped into it. Unfortunately the bowl was rather deep and the egg sank. When I recovered it from the deep it was bright green and looked AWFUL. So I sank it again, dropped on the watercress, and took a rather fuzzy photo in great haste - I wasn't going to let the yolk harden just for a good photo. The poached egg was DELICIOUS with the soup and the bread, which is why I mention it here. Sadly, like me, it was not photogenic.

Quail's Eggs to start Easter lunch

I adore eggs. I find them perfect, magical things. They are so versatile, so wonderful, so full of potential. The rich symbolism of the egg, signifying new beginnings in general, but particularly the resurrection. The egg holds new life within, lying dormant in the tomb of the shell. The presence of this rich symbolism meets a slight obstacle given that, for centuries, Christians have been removing the potential for new life to stem from the egg by boiling it, dying it, and toting it about at Easter. But hey-ho, boiled eggs are delicious. Quail's eggs are particularly delicious, extremely pretty, and they make the perfect Easter starter. We're also very lucky that they're available all year round from the lovely people at Clarence Court.

I like my Quail's eggs done simply (and who doesn't?), with a light salad, some brown bread, and a little mayonnaise. So that's what I have done here. It's really much better if you make your own mayonnaise... for which I claim no trick of my own but direct you to Jennifer Paterson (whose recipe is not available online). Constance Spry is also good on this. But St Delia is available online, so here's a link to her.

If you can't be bothered to make your own mayonnaise, then I give a recipe below for gussying up some from the jar.

Ingredients (the number of people this serves depends entirely upon how many quail's eggs you can eat. I would say that 5 each is the perfect number).

Two dozen quail's eggs

A bag of young salad leaves

Some good brown bread

Celery salt

Mayonnaise - home made

[Or... four good dollops of Hellmans full fat mayo' (there is no point eating low fat mayonnaise) to which you should add two generous teaspoons of dijon mustard, some cayenne pepper, a little honey, three teaspoons of extra virgin olive oil and a drop of wine vinegar. Whisk this all up. It's passable. Add some dill, extra honey, and grain mustard if you fancy serving it with salmon].

Method:

Put the eggs in a pan and cover with cold water. Bring to the boil and when the boil is reached leave for a minute and a half. Then use a slotted spoon to remove eggs and plunge into cold water.

Arrange salad and bread on a plate. Give each quail's egg a little tap on the work surface to crack it a little (otherwise you won't get into them) and arrange them in their nest of leaves. Put a dollop of mayonnaise on the side of the plate, and a few little dishes of celery salt on the table. I like to have some black pepper with them too. And a glass of Pol Roger.