Biker fat ladies and their no-fuss food:
Wright’s death reminds us of what we’re missing out on, writes Xanthe Clay
SO CLARISSA Dickson Wright, who died on March 15 at the age of 66, has gone to the great pheasant shoot in the sky, but she has left us a delicious legacy, changing the way we think about food.
When she first burst on to TV screens in in 1996, wedged into the sidecar of fellow cook Jennifer Paterson’s motorbike, Nigella was just a jobbing journalist, Jamie a 21-year-old sous chef at the River Café, and Gordon Ramsay an unknown, working in a Chelsea gaff called Aubergine.
Delia had just published her Winter Collection, and crème fraîche was only beginning to appear in provincial supermarkets. Spiky-haired chefs were exhorting us to pat salmon tartare into ring moulds.
Dickson Wright and Paterson (who died in 1999) were flamboyant and devil-may-care by comparison, and endearingly eccentric (Dickson Wright famously championed the cardoon, a thistly vegetable). Nor had she any truck with gimmickry.
Her recipes are focused on taste rather than showing off. Advice on presentation is sketchy, or often non-existent, but her instructions are laden with good sense.
She never patronised her readers and assumed they shared her passion for the history of dishes and ingredients. The introductions to her recipes are studded with detail, whether it was debunking the myth of shepherd’s pie or recounting a porridge anecdote from her grandfather’s time as a Glasgow doctor.
Dickson Wright laid the groundwork for the solid, unfussy food that is at the root of modern cooking, now served at restaurants such as Hawksmoor and The Hand and Flowers, as well as the historic dishes revived by the likes of Heston Blumenthal. She put the brains and the guts back into British food – literally as well as figuratively.
Her recipes are often British but not exclusively so. Her Asianinfluenced seafood soup is fragrant with coconut, sesame and ginger, and her Game Cookbook (written with her friend Johnny Scott, aka the baronet Sir John Scott with whom she filmed the series Clarissa and the Countryman) includes Indian, Portuguese, Middle Eastern and Spanish recipes.
All her recipes are doable: ingredients lists are short – like this blissful mix of oranges and poached pears spiked with caramel (pictured).
While on the one hand terrifyingly dogmatic – porridge made with milk rather than water is “puppy sick” – she is also refreshingly unsnobbish, so when a sauce for partridge requires ratatouille she notes a “good tin will do”.
Much was made of that pragmatism 18 months ago when she recommended eating badgers. But it was something she had been considering for some time.
After a lunch at London’s St John, famed for nose-to-tail eating, she congratulated the co-owner Trevor Gulliver on the ham, before leaning in and adding, “They tell me badger hocks are rather good too.”
Here we’ve chosen some of her best recipes, taken from her books
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BREAKFAST
Breakfast like a king is an adage that is dear to my heart. First and foremost is porridge. With Scottish ancestry, I know that porridge must be made with water and a pinch of salt.
When a notable food writer once suggested to my friend Isabel that porridge could be made with milk, she replied that people called that puppy sick. There is a splendid porridge stall at the Edinburgh Farmers’ Market, offering the dish with many and various flavours from whisky to marmalade to cinnamon. But I still eat mine with salt.
When my grandfather worked as a doctor in Glasgow, the tenement dwellers would make a batch of porridge once a week and then pour it into a lined drawer. They would then cut off a slice as required and either eat it cold or reconstitute it in boiling water. People shudder at the thought, but I am reminded of polenta when I think of this.
There are different grades of oats, some which can be made up on the spot and some which need overnight soaking. Pinhead oatmeal is the most textured and, to my mind, the most delicious type; however, it does need to be soaked over-night, unless you have an Aga, in which case it can be cooked overnight in the slow oven and finished on the top in the morning. Medium-ground oatmeal is the most commonly used, while finely ground oatmeal makes an invalid-style gruel rather than porridge, and is best kept for oatcakes, baking or other cooking, such as coating herrings.
It takes only a momentary lapse of concentration for the oats to catch, so I always cook mine in a double boiler, preferably an enamel one.
I put two handfuls of pinhead oatmeal (for two portions) into the top of a double boiler with a pinch of salt and enough water to cover it well, then leave it to soak overnight.
In the morning, I stir it well, put the pan into its base full of boiling water and leave it to simmer, stirring from time to time, for about 20–30 minutes. I then eat it with cold milk and, I am afraid to admit, a dusting of sugar.
It makes enough for two days, so I reheat the rest the following day by pouring boiling water on it, This is one of my easiest and favourite lunch dishes. Use any fish that takes your fancy; I simply nip down to my wonderful fishmonger Davy Clarke and buy whatever appeals: hake, conger eel, salmon, even fillets of sole or plaice, adjusting cooking times to suit and adding them at different times.
To make a more robust dish, cook some egg noodles separately and add them to the soup at the last minute. Serves 2. Ingredients: 1 tbsp olive oil 1 tbsp sesame oil 6 spring onions, chopped Thumb- sized piece root ginger, finely chopped 6 peeled raw prawns ½ tsp belachan (shrimp paste), optional 1 x 400g tin coconut milk
150ml fish stock
Good handful squid rings or small squid
Piece of white fish, about 100g
Dash of soy sauce METHOD
Heat the oils in a saucepan, add the spring onions, ginger and chilli and fry gently.
Add the prawns and fry for two to three minutes.
Add the belachan (if using) and dissolve into the mixture.
Pour in the coconut milk and the stock and bring to the boil.
Add the squid and the fish and simmer for about 5-10 minutes until the fish is cooked. (If using fillets of plaice or sole they will need only two to three minutes to cook through, so add them later.)
Add soy sauce, taste and serve.
DINNER
There is a great deal of rubbish talked about this excellent dish. It is not a rustic invention, but part of the post-industrial nostalgia for the countryside, which was already raising its head in Victorian times.
Shepherd’s pie came into the English cuisine after the Industrial Revolution, when metal grinders for mincing became available, and is designed to use up cooked lamb or mutton. The version I have given was invented by my sister Heather, who used port or whisky in the sauce. It freezes well. Serves 6. Ingredients: 1kg cooked lamb 3 large strong onions, chopped Lard or vegetable oil, for frying 25g butter 25g plain flour 300ml meat stock 150ml port or whisky (or use milk if preferred)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Worcestershire sauce For the potato topping: 1kg potatoes, peeled 75g butter A little milk METHOD
Mince the lamb. Gently fry the onions in a little fat until pale, golden and soft, then drain well.
Make a roux in a saucepan with the butter and flour and cook for two minutes, then slowly add the stock and other liquid to make a smooth, but fairly thick sauce. Remove from the heat and mix in the meat and onions. Season well (a dash of Worcestershire sauce is a good addition) and cook over a low heat for about three minutes. Transfer the meat mixture to a shallow ovenproof dish and leave to cool.
Preheat the oven to 180ºC/350F/Gas 4.
For the topping, boil the potatoes in salted water until tender, drain and leave to steam dry. Mash well with half the butter, a good amount of seasoning and a little milk.
Spread the potatoes at least 2.5cm thick over the meat, and score the top with a fork. Dot the potato with the remaining butter and cook in the oven for 40 minutes. The top should be golden brown.
DESSERT
When I was growing up, we had a number of wild pear trees in the garden – very odd and left over from when St John’s Wood was a real wood, or maybe from the garden of the monastery that gave the area its name.
We were forever looking for ways to use them as they were definitely not eaters. This curious old pudding – which I think must have been my mother’s invention –was one. Serves 4
900g cooking pears, peeled, cored and quartered 135g sugar 4 large oranges METHOD
Poach the pears in a syrup made from 75g sugar and 300ml water, until cooked. Transfer them to a serving dish.
Thinly peel the rind from two of the oranges and cut into thick strips. Cook in a little water until tender, then strain and set aside. Peel the remaining oranges, removing all the pith, and divide into segments. Add to the pears, then chill in the fridge.
Boil the remaining 50g sugar with a tablespoon of water to make caramel. Allow the caramel to set on an oiled plate and crush into small pieces. Scatter over the dish of fruit and decorate with the orange peel. Serve with cream.