In an Eighteenth Century Kitchen

In our ongoing desire to do as little work as possible, we are offering up Famous Food Friday from Lucindaville. But you know that by now! Today's Famous Food Friday has a good bit of gardening involved as we are featuring Beverley Nichols. This is also a bit of a departure as Beverley Nichols didn't actually write his cookbook, he merely found it. Still we are giving him a pass because we like him. (Also we have been working on a gigantic "Brideshead" post and Beverly Nichols knew Evelyn Waugh whom he often refered to as "The Waugh of the Poses" because he believed Waugh to be a bigger poseur than he was!. Seriously, how can you not like someone that funny, but I digress...)





Beverly Nichols is often thought of as a “garden writer” but he was so much more. Nichols was a prolific writer, a novelist, a composer and yes, a gardener. Osbert Sitwell described Beverley Nichols as the original "bright young thing." He “ghosted’ the famous diva Nellie Melba’s memoirs. He wrote a series of detective novels, several books about cats, and even some children’s books. Still, he is best know for his book Down The Garden Path which has been in print for over 75 years.

Beverly Nichols believed he had found a dream garden at a Tudor cottage in Glatton, Cambridgeshire. He knew of his reputation as an urbane and witty aesthete and he calculated that writing a book on gardening would appeal to the masses. Ironically, this calculation would begin his reign as a “garden” writer.

Nichol's "dream" garden before...

Nichols dream garden was a nightmare, but his vision remained in tact and as he wrote about his adventures, which he found as easy to write as years of readers have found it easy to read.

...and after

Down the Garden Path would be followed by A Thatched Roof and finally A Village in a Valley.

The Thatched Cottage

He changed the name of Glatton to Allways, a play on the popular Irving Berlin song, Always. In A Thatched Roof, Nichols writes of finding a cookbook tucked in a cupboard:

“Eagerly we leant over that book in the fading light – a golden October sunset that flooded onto the yellowing paper – yellow to yellow, with the grave black letters dancing before our eyes, as thought they were overjoyed to be read again. As we tuned the pages it seemed that there was a scent in the old room of ghastly sweetmeats; there drifted back to us the perfume of curious country wines, the aroma of forgotten preserves, the bitter-sweet flavor of kitchens which have long crumbled to dust.”

Nichols kept the book for thirty years before turning it over to Dr. Dennis Rhodes who meticulously researched the cookbook. The manuscript was printed on paper watermarked with a coat of arms and sometimes the word “Company”. That would suggest the paper itself came fro the Company of White Paper Makers whose main activity was between 1686 and 1698. In 1968, Cecil and Amelia Woolf published the manuscript. In an Eighteenth Century Kitchen featured illustrations by Duncan Grant.

To Preserve Damsons

Take a pound of sugar & Clarifie it & boy it to a full syrup & put a pound of yo Damsons into it & lett them boyl very leasurely till they are very tender yn set them to coole & 3 day after pour ye sirrup from them and put half a pint of Apple water into it & boyl it’s self till it is boyled to a quacking jelly & take ye scum off from it yn put it to yor Dansoms again boyling hot & so keep them for your use.

Spring is in the air and it is a great time to drag out your Beverley Nichol's books and give them a second look. Not to mention that there have recently been several nice reprints of his works.

Jams, Preserves & Pickles

My friend, Harry Lowe, made a meatloaf last week which spurred a conversation about ketchup. And for that matter, meatloaf. I am not that fond of meatloaf sauced with that bright red layer of ketchup.

We talked about whether the ketchup was spicy enough. Perhaps the next meatloaf should incorporate chili sauce instead of ketchup. Then we started talking about ketchup itself. I told him that a lot of canning books had recipes for ketchup that ran the gamut from bland to spicy. For every ketchup recipe, however, there always seemed to be a corollary recipe for Mushroom Ketchup.

Mushroom ketchup is not something you never see on the shelf, yet recipes for it abound. So, someone out there must have enjoyed it. I began to look at ketchup recipes, but found the directions for mushroom ketchup more interesting.


Rosemary Hume and Muriel Downes published a slim volume called Jams, Preserves & Pickles. It is a basic little book with rather British directions for cooking the fruits, then weighing the fruits and measuring them for the ratio to add sugar. It seems complicated, but it is an accurate way to control the ratio in canning. The book also features a recipe for Mushroom Ketchup. I have read it several times, but I couldn’t think of it slathered on French fries.

Mushroom Ketchup

Weigh some dry open mushrooms and allow 1 1/2 oz. salt to every pound. Break up the mushrooms and put in layers, sprinkled with salt in a stone jar and leave 3-4 days. Stir and press from time to time. At the end of this time press well, cover the jar and put in a cool oven for 2-3 hours. Strain through a fine nylon sieve. Gently press to extract all the juice. To each quart of liquid allow:
1/2 oz. allspice: 1/2 root ginger: 2 blades of mace: pinch of cayenne (optional): 1 shallot, chopped.
Put all into a muslin bag. Put the liquid and spice into a pan and simmer 2-3 hours until well reduced. Strain, put into proper sterilizing bottles and sterilize 15 minutes. This is a precautionary measure. Some red wine in the proportion of a quarter of the quantity of mushroom liquor May be added and boiled with the liquid, or a few drops of brandy may be added to each pint.

I am going to try this and see if anyone asked, "Do you want mushroom ketchup with those fries?"

River Cottage Handbook No. 2 – Preserves

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall seems an unlikely cookery chap. He is a good cook, but quite unkept and rumor has it, fired from some of the most posh restaurants in London. Then he made a fateful decision. He left the restaurant business and moved to and old farm named the River Cottage. There he cooked, hunted game, planted vegetables, gathered from his hedgerows and wrote about it. The River Cottage Cookbook became a huge success. Huge in the sense that it spawned an industry. Though they are no longer tenants at the River Cottager the name lives on.

They are now producing a series of “handbooks” including River Cottage Handbook No. 2 – Preserves. While Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall writes the introduction, the actual compiler of the recipes is Pam Corbin. Nicknamed “Pam the Jam” she was running a small batch preserving company when she came on board for Preserving Days at River Cottage and never left.


This is a great little book with innovative preserves, like Nasturtium ‘Capers’ made from nasturtium seed pods, Blues and Bay, a blueberry and bay leaf preserve and this Florence fennel.

Pickled Florence Fennel

Salt
1 kg fennel bulbs, trimmed and thinly sliced, a few feathery fronds reserved
1 liter cider vinegar
15 g peppercorns (black, white or pink)
75 g granulated sugar
Grated zest of 1 unwaxed lemon
3 or 4 bay leaves
1 tsp celery or fennel seeds
3-4 tbsp olive, hemp or rapeseed oil

Pour 2 –3 liters water into a large pan, salt it well and bring to a boil. Add the sliced fennel and blanch for no more than a minute. Drain in a colander, cool under cold water, then drain and pat dry.

Put the vinegar, peppercorns, sugar, lemon zest, bay leaves and celery or fennel seeds into a saucepan. Bring to the boil and continue to boil about 10 minutes until the liquor reaches a syrupy consistency. The vinegar vapors will create quite a pungent atmosphere in the kitchen.

Pack the fennel into wide-necked, sterilized jars, lacing a few fennel fronds between the slices. Remove the vinegar syrup from the heat and carefully pour over the fennel. You may well find all the spices remain at the bottom of the pan. If this happens, distribute them between the jars, poking the peppercorns and bay leaves down through the fennel slices. Pour sufficient oil into each jar to seal the surface. Seal the jars with vinegar[proof lids. Use within 12 months.

It’s not called Florence fennel for nothing. Make up a couple of jars of this fennel, and pop one open in mid-winter. It will be the beginning of beautiful staycation.

Putting Up

My friend Ann (not to be confused with my friend AnnE, who often comments on the blog and tries to correct my dyslexic spelling) gave me two very different cookbooks. I have been craving Putting Up: A Seasonal Guide to Canning in the Southern Tradition by Stephen Dowdney. It is a cookbook on preserving from a Southern perspective written by a guy who ran his own boutique canning company and was a classmate of Pat Conroy at The Citadel. Good enough for me.

Not good enough for the people who comment on Amazon. This book has been savaged on Amazon --IGNORE THEM!!! Mr. Dowdney offers and alternative to traditional hot water baths for sweetly acidic jams, etc. He tells his reader how to use the inversion method. One would think he had written a book advocating canning kittens and puppies! I recently put up some blackberry preserves and put them up at Lucindaville.

In that post I sort of addressed this controversy. I, like Mr. Dowdney, Christine Ferber, Clotilde Dusoulier, June Taylor and many other illustrious cooks, use inversion to seal my sweet jams. The British and French have done it this way for years. I understand your concern. That is why I am so surprised about the negative comments for Putting Up. This is one of the first books on preserving (and I have many, from at least 4 continents) that explains how the home cook can ph test canning to make sure it is safe. I have always wanted to preserve garlic, but I have read that it is a harbinger of bacteria and I have shied away from canning garlic. After reading this book, I am looking forward to the garlic crop coming in, as it is my first canning recipe from this book!!

For you, I have chosen a favorite of mine, ginger pear preserves. To avoid any controversy, I am going to give you the recipe. You can use it as you see fit.

Ginger Pear Preserves

INGREDIENTS
3 pounds pears, firm but ripe, peeled, seeded and chopped
2 pounds sugar
2 lemons, sliced thin, seeded and slices quartered
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 ounces crystallized ginger, chopped fine

Pace pears and sugar in a pot; simmer, stirring often. While pears are softening, add lemon slices, lemon juice and ginger. Increase heat and cook until syrup thickens.

Break out those biscuits!

Fine Preserving

Today's cookbook is a twofer, two different editions of Fine Preserving by Catherine Plagemann. In the late 60’s Plagemann’s slim book on preserving featured both sweet and savory recipes for chutneys, sauces, jellies and condiments. Today’s more adventurous audience would probably embrace Plagemann’s book, but it went out of print not long after it was published.

The book might have fallen into obscurity, but it had a great champion, M. F. K. Fisher. Though they never met, Fisher was instrumental in getting the book re-issued but with a twist.

While sitting around talking about books with a group of people, including small publisher, John Harris, the subject of lost classics came up. Fisher stated that the one book she would have reprinted was Fine Preserving. Intrigued by that choice, John Harris said he would look at a copy but several days later he called Fisher to say he could not find one in any library. (It was the olden days before Amazon.) Fisher offered to send him her copy, but when he received it, he found the pages annotated with personal notes. Instead of simply re-publishing the book, Harris wanted to publish it with M.F. K. Fisher’s annotations. Mrs. Plagemann died several years before the annotated version, so she never knew of the great influence the book had on Fisher.

The second incarnation of Fine Preserving, nearly 20 years after the first combines the original with cryptic and biting marginalia from Fisher.


This is one of Fisher’s favorite recipes and one of mine, too.

Pickled Seedless Grapes

Wash and stem enough grapes to make 3 cups. Place them in 3 very clean half-pint canning jars.
Combine:
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 cup white wine vinegar or white vinegar
3 3-inch cinnamon sticks
1 tablespoon minced onions
Bring these ingredients to a boil, stirring well to distribute the sugar; simmer mixture for five minutes. Pour the syrup over the grape, putting 1 cinnamon stick in each jar. Stir and let stand overnight. Next day the grapes will be ready to serve.
If you want to keep the relish for future use, it is a good idea to put the jars in brown-paper bags before putting them on the shelf, as the light tends to darken the top layer of grapes, and this is not a pretty site. Plan to use this pickle soon, or at least before the year is out, as the grape skins toughen as well as darken if they are kept too long.
Serve this relish with meat, fish, poultry or game.
It also makes a delicious and unusual condiment as an accompaniment to curry.

M.F. K Fisher’s Commentary

And so now we come to one of my favorite recipes in the whole book! (There are two of them. The other is for Chermoula.) I make these pickled grapes very often, Winter and Summer, now that in California we can get good seedless grapes fro South America to add to our own crops. People are astonished and pleased by them.
The pickle should be served cold, drained of juices, and without the cinnamon stick. My version is somewhat different from Mrs. Plagemann’s: I’ve cut out the minced onions. I don’t think it adds anything. (Perhaps cherries, pitted or not, might be good this way?)
Mrs. Plagemann uses little jars filled with grapes, washed and dried, and with one cinnamon stick in each jar. The hot syrup (really a kind of bar-mix, called “simple syrup,” I think) is poured in immediately and they are sealed.
The cinnamon stick I find essential. I tried once without it and it didn’t “feel” right. White seedless grapes will turn brown, as she says, so they should be put in a dark place. Myself, I think the seedless “flame” grapes, the red Peruvians, are the most delicious. They last a couple of years, but I feel that after one month they are at their best, rather crisp and fresh tasting. (But they are fine in one day!) They are delicious with any sandwiches, or cold meats, or fowl hot or cold, fish hot or cold, veal smoked or not, lamb…all most anything except maybe vanilla ice cream.

I agree with Fisher, the onions are not necessary, but I think they would be quite lovely heated and poured over vanilla ice cream! These grapes are a perfect hostess gift. Face it, everyone brings a bottle of wine, so why not mix it up a bit with these lovely pickled grapes.

Sensational Preserves

I don’t care if you ever make single recipe in this book, the pictures alone make Sensational Preserves by Hilaire Walden worth owning. Sensational is a good word to describe the photography in this book, which has over 125 photos. The preserves look like they were created in a home kitchen. Ok, a home kitchen with a talented cook – with copious time on her hands, but still…



A fundamental difference exists between preserving in Europe and in the U.S. Americans process preserves in a water bath. Europeans add hot preserves to hot jars, invert the jars, then right them after a few minutes. For all of you who dutifully read their 4-H canning instructions, this inversion method is unacceptable. While Walden is British, in this book, she advocates a water bath process with most recipes. The copy I own is the American version and it would be interested to see if the original British version uses the water bath or if that method was added to the American version.

This kumquat recipe is one of the few that requires no processing.

Kumquats in Vodka and Cointreau

3/4 plus 2 tablespoons sugar
2 1/2 pounds kumquats
1 1/4 cups vodka
2/3 cup Cointreau

Mix the sugar and 2 1/2 cups of water in a large pan and heat gently, stirring, until the sugar dissolves. Meanwhile, prick the kumquats all over with a large embroidery needle. Add them to the pan and simmer for about 15 minutes or until the skin feels soft; pierce with a fine skewer to test.

Using a slotted spoon, remove the kumquats from the syrup and pack into warm, clean, dry jars. Pour the vodka and Cointreau over the kumquats, then fill to the top with the reserved syrup.

Cover and seal the jars. Invert them gently to mix the liquids. Store in a cool, dark, dry place for a least one month before eating.



These kumquats are lovely simply served over ice cream. I also like to open a jar and scatter them around a roasting chicken during the last half hour of cooking.

The Joy of Pickling

I am a firm believer in having multiple cookbooks on every topic. But if you want to start pickling, the one book you should pick up is Linda Ziedrich’s, The Joy of Pickling. It offers a great combination of general information with recipes that range from basic cucumber pickles to pickled pigs feet.

I always have an abundance of green beans. I am not fond of frozen green beans, so I like to pickle several jars at the end of the season. This is a quick and easy recipe to save a bit of summer.







Basil Green Beans

6 cloves of garlic
36 black peppercorns
3 pounds young, tender, snap beans, trimmed, if necessary, to 4 inches
12 basil sprigs
3 1/2 cups white wine vinegar
3 1/2 cups water
2 T pickling salt

1. Into each of 6 sterile pint mason jars, put one sliced garlic clove and six peppercorns. Pack the beans vertically into the jars, adding two basil sprigs to each jar.

2. In a nonreactive saucepan, bring to a boil the vinegar, water and salt. Pour the hot liquid over the beans leaving 1/2 inch head space. Close the jars with hot, two-piece caps. Process the jars for 5 minutes in a boiling -water bath, or pasteurize then for thirty minutes in water heated to 180- 185 degrees F.

3. Store the cooled jars in a cool, dry, dark place for at least one month.


Pop open the jar on a particularly snowy day and think back on your garden!

P.S. In May of 2009, anew edition of this classic book will be published. Stay tuned!