A Girl and Her Greens. April Bloomfield
with its warm, nutty flavour. Onions can become incredibly sweet, leaking that sweetness into stews and sauces. The way you treat onions and garlic, even though the two are not usually the starring veg, determines the character of the final dish. Browning them will make the entire dish taste hearty, more appropriate for a chilly day. Lowering the heat and keeping them free of colour makes for a lighter-tasting dish, even when it features a hefty veg like parsnips or cauliflower. Rush the process, however, and your food will lack depth. Get distracted and your garlic will burn.
I hope you’ll keep this in mind as you read my recipes. As I did in my first cookbook, I decided that instead of writing recipes that look invitingly short, I’d offer recipes full of the little details that make food great. So please don’t mistake a recipe that looks long for a recipe that’s too complex to cook.
be fussy
Once you get to cooking, you should be particular, or – to be less charitable – fussy, about the ingredients you use. That the tastier these raw ingredients are the better your food will be should go without saying. Yet while I reckon that everyone agrees that a sweet pea is more delicious than a starchy bland one, I also reckon that each cook has her own quirky preferences. I embrace mine, which is why the recipes in this book are the way they are.
I leave the skin and spindly roots on beetroot, because they’re tasty and pretty. I often blanch and peel tomatoes that I plan to cook with, sometimes even running the result through a food mill to achieve a smooth texture, without bothersome bits of seeds. I always peel the caps of portobello mushrooms, though I’m not quite sure why.
I’m particular, too, about some of the ingredients that many recipes in this book share. Here, you’ll find a rundown of these staple ingredients that reflects my quirks. I hope you’ll try things my way, but I know the way you cook is a reflection of who you are and everyone’s different. Whether you adopt my eccentricities or not, you too should embrace your inner fuss-bucket and decide what you like and what gets you grumpy.
ANCHOVIES
Anchovies are good friends to vegetables, adding salty umami but not necessarily fishy flavour. I prefer salt-packed whole anchovies to oil-packed fillets. You’ll need to fillet them yourself, but it only takes a few extra minutes. If you must use the oil-packed kind, make sure they’re top quality – I like the Ortiz brand – and that you gently wipe the oil from the fillets before you cook with them.
Soaking and filleting salt-packed anchovies
Rinse the anchovies one at a time under cold running water, rubbing them gently between your fingers to remove the salt. Put them in a small bowl and add just enough water to cover. After about a minute – if you soak them for too long, they’ll lose their umami quality – give them another quick rinse.
To fillet the anchovies, hold an anchovy under cold running water. Use your fingers to brush away the soft, loose matter near the head and at the belly. Rub the outside to remove any remaining salt or hard bits. Keeping the anchovy under the water, gently work a fingertip along the belly to start to separate the fillets. Gently pull the fillets apart – this should be easy, especially once you get the hang of it. Drape the now boneless fillet over the edge of a bowl to drain. Take the second fillet and pinch the backbone, pull it gently out, and discard it. Put the second fillet next to the first. Do the same with the rest of the anchovies.
GARLIC
In this book, I call for two types of garlic: standard garlic and spring garlic. By the time you buy standard garlic, the bulbs have hung in a warm, dry place for several weeks until the skins dry out and become papery. The process, known as ‘curing’, helps preserve the garlic. Spring garlic, however, is eaten right after it’s pulled from the earth, and has a sweeter, milder flavour. During its season, I often use spring garlic in place of standard garlic, though I add a bit more since its flavour is not as strong. The standard garlic you get at farmers’ markets is typically good and fresh. In many supermarkets, however, it often has a little bright green germ growing inside or even peeking out the tip of the cloves. If you’re fussy like me, you’ll slice garlic cloves in half lengthwise and flick this green bit out before you get to chopping or cooking. Some people say the green bit makes your food a bit bitter; I don’t find it bitter, but have seen it contribute an off-putting blue-ish colour to what I’m cooking.
HERBS
Herbs are delicate things. When you’re washing and handling them, be gentle. With herbs like basil and mint, which oxidise easily, be especially careful and always chop or tear them just before you plan to use them. Because herbs are so fragile, I’m always torn about how to provide measurements for them. I hate the idea of calling for tablespoons and cups, because thinking about someone cramming delicate herbs in a cup measure makes my bum cheeks clench. So I’ve opted for measurements that feel more natural to me: handfuls, small handfuls, and what I call five-finger pinches. Imagine a heap of mint leaves – a five-finger pinch means as much as you can grab with just the tips of all five fingers, as opposed to a typical pinch for which you’d grab with just your thumb and two fingers. Most of these measurements assume that you’ve picked the leaves from the tough stems. For parsley and coriander, however, I like to use what I call ‘delicate sprigs’, which are a few inches long and include thin, tender stems as well as leaves.
TOMATOES
I’m plenty fussy about tomatoes, whether they’re fresh or tinned. I often treat both to a little grooming before I cook with them.
Peeling fresh tomatoes
In several recipes, I call for tomatoes to be peeled. Here’s how to do it. Bring a large pot of water to the boil. Use a knife to cut a shallow ‘X’ at the bottom of each tomato. Working in batches of tomatoes of similar size, carefully plunge them in the boiling water and blanch for 20 seconds for larger tomatoes, and about 10 seconds for smaller ones. Gently transfer them to a colander and run them under cold running water. The peels will have loosened and you should be able to pull them off easily at the ‘X’.
Draining and trimming tinned tomatoes
Any recipe in this book that calls for tinned tomatoes asks that you drain and trim them. First, drain and discard the liquid they come in, which I find tastes artificially sweet and salty. Second, trim any yellowish patches, straggling skin, and the tough core from each tomato.
CRUSHED SPRING PEAS WITH MINT
As a girl in England, I always loved mushy peas, whether they were made the real way – from a starchy variety of pea called marrowfat that’s dried, then soaked – or dumped into a pot straight from a tin. Nowadays I prefer this mash made from fresh, sweet shelling peas – a twist on the British classic, which actually takes less work to make than its inspiration. It’s wonderful spread in a thick layer on warm bread or as a dip for raw veg, like radishes, carrots, and wedges of fennel.
makes about 300g
300g fresh peas (from about 900g of pods)
25g aged pecorino, finely grated
1½ teaspoons Maldon or another flaky sea salt
1 small spring garlic clove or ½ small garlic clove, smashed, peeled and roughly chopped
12 medium mint leaves
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
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