The Vicar’s Wife’s Cook Book. Elisa Beynon
Chicken Soup
Pull the rest of the meat off the carcass and add to the remainder of the vegetables and liquid left in the pan. Reheat and blitz in a food processor or liquidiser, or use a hand-held number until it is soupy. If the result is too thick, add some boiling water to thin it down a bit. What you’ll get is a softly spoken soup that serves two, with seconds.
Light and Lazy Stock
I nearly didn’t bother making a stock from the bones of this bird; after all, it had already been sitting in liquid, bubbling away, for 3 hours. But I did decide to do it after all, but to make it simple. So I half heartedly chucked the carcass in the pan, didn’t bother with vegetables, nor bay leaves, filled up the big pan it was in with 2 litres of water and let it come to the boil and then simmer for a few hours. It was worth it: it wasn’t the richest of stocks, but it was still good enough to use in another light broth or a risotto. I was left feeling like a virtuously thrifty wartime housewife. My grandmother would have been proud.
Stir-fried Pak Choi with Sesame Seeds
1 tablespoon sesame or groundnut oil
1 head of pak choi
1 garlic clove, peeled and crushed
1 tablespoon sesame seeds, lightly toasted in a dry frying pan
Heat the oil in a wok, or similar, and chop the pak choi into slices. Throw it into the smoking pan with the garlic and toss for 3–4 minutes. Serve with the sesame seeds sprinkled haphazardly over the top.
Mincemeat-stuffed Baked Apples
Plan the cooking of these apples so that they can be served straight away, as they will collapse if they are left to stand. Old-fashioned this pudding may well be, but sometimes the old ways are the very best.
2 Bramley apples
For the mincemeat filling:
4 tablespoons good-quality mincemeat
20g toasted hazelnuts, coarsely chopped
20g dried cranberries or 20g ready-to-eat apricots, chopped
finely grated zest of ½ orange
2 teaspoons brandy (optional)
custard or single cream, to serve (optional)
First, make the mincemeat filling by mixing all the ingredients together in a bowl. Preheat the oven to 200°C/Gas Mark 6.
Core the apples with an apple corer and then open up the cavity a little more with a swivel potato peeler, making sure that the resulting hole is at least 2.5–3cm across so that there is plenty of room for the filling. Then score a horizontal line around the centre of each one, just through the skin, to prevent them bursting whilst they’re in the oven. Place the apples in a shallow, lightly buttered ovenproof dish. Generously fill the centre of each one with the mincemeat mixture. Pour 6 tablespoons of water into the bottom of the dish, cover it loosely with foil and bake for 30 minutes. After this time, remove the foil and bake for a further 15–20 minutes or until the apples are soft and tender right through to the centre.
Serve straight away with the syrupy juices and lashings of custard.
Bargain-basement Lunch
You don’t have to be penny-pinching to cook this, but if you are, it will only add to your enjoyment of it. This lunch gives you comfort food to be proud of; so cheap to make that you’ll want to tell all your budget-minded, bargain-hunting friends about it.
All too easily we overlook the cheaper cuts of meat, nervous that, unlike our wartime predecessors, we don’t know what to do with them. However, we ignore these cuts to our loss as, even for the most incompetent cook, they are a breeze to get the best out of and will save us money to buy new shoes.
We didn’t actually have this for lunch on the day we cooked it because we had to go to a child’s birthday bash after church. Instead, we had it with family members in the evening, bowls on knees, eyes glued to the rugby (the boys) while chatting aimlessly (the girls). It all felt wonderfully relaxed and cosy. On a chilly Sunday this would make a really fabulous lunch. Ideally, you would prepare it the day before and gently reheat it when you want to eat it. Or, if that’s not possible, cook it on the day, stick it in the oven, go out in the fresh air and come back to a feast full of cheaply gained flavour.
2 tablespoons plain flour
salt and pepper
850g brisket of beef, cut into 2.5cm chunks
2 tablespoons olive oil
6 small, or 3 large, carrots, cut into 2cm chunks
3 parsnips, quartered, cores removed and cut into 2cm chunks
2 onions, peeled and thickly sliced
3 celery sticks, thinly sliced
500ml Guinness
6 sprigs of thyme
1 × 400g tin plum tomatoes
8 pickled walnuts (that’s a jar’s worth)
2–3 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
Preheat the oven to 160°C/Gas Mark 3. Put the flour into a bowl, add salt and pepper and toss in the pieces of brisket. Now heat the oil in a large, flameproof casserole dish on the top of the stove and throw in the beef, in batches if necessary, to brown off the pieces. You’ll need to be on hand to stir things round, as the meat may stick. Return the meat to the pan, add all the vegetables and then the rest of the ingredients. Let it all come to the boil, put the lid on the casserole and put it in the oven.
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