ELISABETH LUARD
17TH-CENTURY BRITISH REBORN
Just right for the age of austerity – and, not to put too fine a point on it, jingoism – is Bake Off finalist Mary-anne Boermans’s Deja Food (Square Peg, £20), subtitled Second Helpings of Classic British Dishes. You catch the thrust: forget the fancy frills and furbelows – Britain’s culinary heritage is ‘frugal but full of flavour, deliciously different, yet proudly traditional’.
What emerges from this merry gallop through our national library of good housekeeping is that what we really like to eat is meat, preferably beef, but pork or lamb will do. Once we’ve eaten it, roast, boiled or stewed, leftovers are used for what Victorian housewives called ‘made’ dishes – pies, pasties and Frenchified ragouts and fricassees. The only puddings included are savoury, though fruit pops up in sauces and stuffings.
While the recipes are set within their historical context, most are updated or given in the form of modern alternatives, and many are illustrated, making the book a useful recipe-source as well as an entertaining and informative read. Here’s a trio of summery recipes.
Mustard and egg salad dressing
An unusual dressing, more substantial than a rémoulade, lighter than a mayonnaise, features in The Practical Kitchen Gardiner, by 17th-century gardener Stephen Switzer. Add dill for a sauce for poached salmon; chives to dress warm potato salad; tarragon for chicken salad. Makes about 200ml
6 tablespoons oil 4 table spooons vinegar 2 large hard-boiled egg-yolks 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard Salt and pepper (optional) fresh herbs
Put all the ingredients, except the salt and pepper (and herbs, if using), in a blender until smooth. Taste, season.
Mary-anne’s chicken-liver and bacon salad
First tasted on her 18th birthday, this was brought to table, piled high in a bowl. The appeal lay in the presentation. Serves 1
½ slice bread 2 rashers streaky bacon 15g butter 2 chicken livers, cut into small cubes 2-3 tablespoons oil-and-vinegar dressing 3-4 iceberg lettuce leaves
Toast the bread on both sides, dice and keep warm. Grill the bacon until crisp, chop into pieces, keep warm. Melt the butter in a small pan and fry the chicken livers over a high heat for a few seconds to blitz the surface – insides still pink. Toss the lettuce with the dressing and heap in an airy pile on a dish. Sprinkle with the bacon, toast and chicken livers.
Gervase Markham’s sweet & sour spinach
Greens with vinegar and currants in 1623... A classic combination in Middle Eastern cooking to this day. Serves 4 as a side-dish
200g spinach leaves 20g unsalted butter 2 tablespoons vinegar 1 teaspoon icing sugar 75g currants salt and pepper
Melt the butter in a roomy pan, add the spinach, cover and shake over a medium heat for two minutes, until the leaves are just wilted. Uncover and add the vinegar, sugar and currants. Reheat, toss together, taste and season. That’s it.