The Vicar’s Wife’s Cook Book. Elisa Beynon
I am a bit obsessive about gravy and constantly fret there won’t be enough, so when people go for seconds I am there, bossily waving the gravy boat in their faces, lest they forget to anoint their fresh portion with my lovingly made sauce.
Again, I don’t think one really needs a recipe for this as everyone seems to have their own tips and tricks for how to make the perfect roastie. (See the ‘Mackenzie Method’) Here are my personal hints.
1.5kg floury maincrop potatoes, such as King Edwards or Maris Piper
2 tablespoons goose fat or lard
salt
Peel the potatoes and cut them into medium-sized pieces. (I tend to go for a sort of triangle shape as I cut them up.) Put them in a pan of salted boiling water and pop on a lid. Parboil them for 10 minutes or so, then pour them into a colander. Put the lid from the pan on top of the colander and hold it down as you give the potatoes a really good shake. (I do this shaking business in the colander rather than the pan as a heavy pan full of potatoes is a bit too cumbersome for me to handle.)
Preheat the oven to 210°C/Gas Mark 7. Put the fat into a roasting tin and put in the oven to heat up. Once it has melted, remove the tin from the oven and put it on the hob over a medium heat. Now introduce the potatoes to the fat and turn the potatoes in it until they are all evenly coated. Do be careful as you do this because the fat may well spit at you. Put the potatoes in the oven. (Ideally you should cook them in a separate oven from the beef, but if you haven’t got one, compromise by cooking the beef at 200°C/Gas Mark 6 and whack up the heat once the beef comes out.)
Most cookery books say that roast potatoes take around 50 minutes, but I have found that they usually take longer than that – about 1–1½ hours. You want them fluffy inside and looking like they do in the Mackenzie household. Remove from the oven, sprinkle with a good amount of salt and serve.
Making this reminds me of the endless purée-making I did for my children when I was weaning them. However, this concoction, with its creamy cumin headiness, is a far more adult affair. It would also be delicious served to liven up a chicken breast cooked with lemon and garlic or a plainly cooked lamb chop.
750g carrots, peeled and chopped into 5cm lengths
100ml cream (single or double)
2 teaspoons ground cumin (or maybe more, depending on your taste)
salt and pepper
Put the carrots in boiling salted water and boil for 7–8 minutes until soft. Drain off the water (reserving it for the gravy or making soup), pour in the cream and stir in the cumin and some seasoning. Blend the whole lot together using a hand-held blender or a food processor and reheat, if necessary, before serving.
An Alternative Purée
Parsnip and swede also make a fine purée, and making it is a sneaky way of getting people who claim to hate swede to eat it.
Peel 5 parsnips, chop them into chunks and do the same with half of a small swede or a quarter of a large one. Boil in salted water until soft – about 20–25 minutes – and drain, saving the cooking water. Pour 100ml of milk and 100ml of cream into the pan you used to cook the vegetables, and heat it up. Add the parsnips and swede, mash together and whisk with an electric whisk. Add salt and pepper, a knob of butter and maybe some freshly grated nutmeg.
Two Cabbages with Apple and Red Onion
One of the reasons I love my weekly organic vegetable box is that it forces me, and those who eat with me, to partake of food I could easily avoid or overlook. Take the cabbage family: so often the cabbage conjures up memories of bad smells and soggy school dinners, and so we can be inclined to give anything related to it a wide berth. However, cooked with a light touch, cabbage and suchlike can be wonderful. One day, with a red cabbage and a small green one asking to be eaten, I knocked up the following as a side dish to the beef.
½ red cabbage, de-cored and cut into chunks
1 apple (I used a Cox’s), quartered and cored
1 red onion
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 garlic clove, peeled and crushed
2 tablespoons white wine
1 green cabbage, de-cored
knob of butter
salt and pepper
First, get out your food processor and find your slicing disc. Use it to cut up the red cabbage, the apple and the onion. (You could use the other half of the cabbage to make the red cabbage and Stilton slaw – see here) Put the oil in a large pan and add the red cabbage, onion, apple and garlic. Put a lid on the pan and make sure the heat is at medium. Give it all a stir from time to time and let it cook for about 15 minutes, or until the cabbage has softened but still has some crunch. Then pour in the wine and let it bubble away.
Meanwhile, finely shred the green cabbage and add it to the pan, stirring until it is wilting nicely, which should only take a few minutes. Add a knob of butter and season.
If the title of this dessert conjures up a picture of funfair toffee apples, I do apologise. Banish those thoughts of toothache-inducing candied fruit on sticks and instead think of sticky, caramel sweetness (oh dear, that’s all a bit confusingly redolent of Mackenzie parsnips). This pudding produced lively remembrances of crumbles from the past. My husband’s sister talked lovingly about her mother’s thick crumble toppings. ‘Goodness, you are just so toppist!’ exclaimed the brother-in-law ‘Fine,’ came the reply, ‘you can have my bottom and I’ll have your top.’ An interesting prospect …
1kg