As Strong As Soup

If I ever get round to inventing a time machine then I'll probably revisit any year from the 1980s rather than live through 2020 again. So for this Christmas season I'm looking back to the decade "when the frocks went posh" (as the estimable Cleaners from Venus say). I'm offering versions of both a sauce and a side dish from the 80s that would be useful at any time of the year but will be just perfect alongside Christmas leftovers. So make a note of them in your Filofax, blow the dust off the Lloyd Cole album and I'll see you down at the wine bar later. First, the sauce.... Grelette Sauce This cold sauce is very easy to put together. It can be served in generous amounts to complement a main course or in smaller dollops as a condiment in a similar way to tartare sauce. I remember it being served mainly with fish and fish terrines but it also works well with turkey, chicken or vegetable dishes. Grelette sauce was created (I think) by Roger Vergé but there were ...

This is a simple, little soup but I think it makes humble ingredients taste pleasingly complex and truly satisfying. It's best to use a classic, ruby-coloured beetroot for this dish because it looks so good but other colours will work just fine. You might find that some golden beetroots are extremely sweet, so be prepared to increase the amount of lime juice. If you wished, you could add fresh horseradish to the soup or even make your own creamed horseradish. I agree that homemade is always best but, unless you have the time to spare and you reckon you can eat a significant amount of horseradish, I think it's a lot easier to buy a small jar of good quality creamed horseradish. Although I'd normally serve a bowl of this for lunch, it will also work well as a delicate and refined starter or appetiser since the colour is just so impressive. Of course, the colour is also difficult to eradicate, so try to keep the soup away from your shagpile carpet, best tablecloth, white j...

La ficelle is a local speciality in the Baie de Somme area, although it's not immediately obvious what's local about it. Like many of the dishes from that region it's definitely rich and filling (as well as delicious) but, let's face it, it could be made anywhere. It seems that la ficelle Picarde was actually invented in Amiens in the 1950s by a chef trying to outdo his rivals in a contest to produce a dish for a banquet. (If you're familiar with the Great British Menu TV series then this idea will sound strangely familiar). La ficelle really caught on and has never disappeared from local menus. This is the sort of food that fortifies you for cold winter days or just gives you that sense of being thoroughly fed that we all need now and then.  I know that some cooks in the Picardy region like to use a little beer in their crêpe recipe but, apart from that, there's nothing special or different about the crêpes used for the ficelles and you can use any recipe ...

This is a fragrant, close-textured loaf with a good crust that's a bit out of the ordinary. It's just right for soaking up sauces or soups or serving with dips but it can also make a very decent, unusual breakfast bread. It's based on a North African bread but I won't deny that it's a long way from any genuine article. As ever, I'm happy to let machines do the heavy lifting and I use a breadmaker to prepare the dough. You can make the dough in a more hands-on way if you have the time, but the machine makes the preparation blissfully quick and easy. On this occasion I made some bulgur balls in aubergine and tomato sauce (or Patlicanli Eksi Asi) to eat with the bread. The recipe comes from my learned, online friend Ozlem Warren and you can find it in her lovely Turkish Table book or online  here . Believe me, it's truly delicious. Yes, I know that a North African inspired bread doesn't really belong alongside a dish from southern Turkey but I have never c...

So you've bought a bottle of Passoã to make some porn star martinis at home (it's the most popular cocktail in the UK, apparently) but now what do you do with the rest of the bottle? Well you could make a variation on the classic rum baba. At least, that's what I did. The classic baba is made with an enriched yeast dough soaked in a rum syrup and for many years I thought that everyone made them that way. Eventually a kindly French person took me aside and let me into a secret: a lot of babas are made using baking powder. It's a very quick and easy way to produce babas and I enjoy them just as much as the traditional version.  I used canelé moulds to make the babas simply because I like the shape but small savarin moulds are more usual. I put enough mixture into the mould to make sure that it bulges from the top when cooked. You could be a little more restrained if you like.  If you want to make something closer to a classic baba using this recipe, then omit the vanilla,...

For some reason hybrid berries such as tayberries, loganberries and boysenberries don't seem to be too popular amongst gardeners in this country. I bought a single boysenberry plant about 7 years ago and I get a heavy crop of berries every year in return for very little effort. And when I see a decent crop of berries then I usually think liqueur.  Every autumn I make a bottle or so of foraged blackberry liqueur (crème de mûre) and I've used that same process to make a crème de mûre de boysen. I know that you can simply steep fruit in vodka and sugar and that can be very pleasing but when liqueurs made that way are added to kirs and cocktails they just don't taste right to me. I suppose that's what happens after many years of drinking French crème de mûre and crème de cassis. So I stick to this traditional French method. You don't have to use boysenberries, it will work with other similar berries such as cultivated blackberries or tayberries. This liqueur is very we...

The mention of goat meat will cause many people of my acquaintance to run screaming from the room. I'm not really sure why this is. Goat is a very tasty, lean meat that's well suited to long, gentle cooking, especially in a slow cooker. The first goat dish I bumped into many, many years ago was a Jamaican goat curry and I'm still tempted to make a version of that dish whenever I find good goat meat. But this time I decided to do something a little different after I read that “traditional” rogan josh is often made with goat. This isn't an authentic or traditional rogan josh. My recipe is really a mishmash of the nicest rogan josh dishes that I've eaten in England combined with elements of other slow-cooked curries. The origins of the true, traditional rogan josh seem to be disputed but I favour the idea that the name derives from ratan jot (alkanet root) which was originally used to give the dish a distinct red colour.  Goat meat tends to be very lean but for...

It's been easier to buy less common ingredients than basic cupboard essentials during the recent strange days. Flour has been the most difficult item to find in my tiny corner of the world. Fortunately, I could find gram flour and I used it to make onion bhajis and socca and, because I like a simple life, I always make very straightforward versions of those treats in the oven.  It might be useful at this point if I try to be quite clear for once in my life: when I say gram flour, I'm talking about chickpea flour. In the UK most chickpea flour seems to be sold as gram flour, unless it's ‘farina di ceci’ imported from Italy. There is technically a difference between gram and farina di ceci but for these simple recipes that shouldn't really matter. It's also possible that you might find chickpea flour called ‘besan’. Once again there is technically a difference between besan and gram flour but the same product is often labelled with both names in this country so let...

This might seem a strange recipe for these difficult times when flour, yeast and fruit can be so hard to find but I recently bought a veg and fruit box from a restaurant supplier without knowing the contents. Oddly it contained quite a lot of grapes and this is the most comforting grape recipe that I know. Personally, I'd say it was worth using some of that precious flour and yeast. It isn't exactly an authentic, traditional recipe like the breads you might find from Italy or the south of France, especially given my usual desire to let machines do most of the work (in this case, the breadmaker). Still, who cares? It tastes lovely and the breadmaker does its best to reduce the level of faff. Of course, you don't have to use a machine, the dough can be made quite easily in a more conventional way. This is a particularly excellent breakfast bread for lazy mornings. But it's not only a jentacular morsel of joy, it's also lovely with cheese or paté and ideal for taki...

For obvious reasons I'm thinking about simple, comforting food at the moment and this soup fits the bill for me. But I also find myself looking back to better times and, for various happy reasons, I've ventured westward to Devon a number of times in the last decade. While in that fine county I ate an abundance of excellent food. In fact, I enjoyed some of the very best meals I've ever eaten and, believe me, I've eaten a LOT of fine meals in my life. This recipe, though, dates back to much earlier visits. I first bumped into this soup somewhere in Devon (I can't remember exactly where) back in the 1980s. To be honest, this probably isn't quite as rich as the original. I suspect that there were a copious few dollops of fine Devon butter and cream involved back in those more indulgent times. The good news is that this recipe might just be possible with what you have in your cupboards, fruit bowl and freezer. It works very well when made with frozen peas and any...

I know that there are plenty of people around who outwardly look quite normal but inexplicably don't like beetroot. I'm definitely not one of them. Recently I made a mistake and bought too much beetroot. Actually, that was a good thing. It gave me the chance to make a couple of special but really simple beetroot treats. Beetroot In A Sort of Ocklye Dressing This is based a little loosely on a recipe from the Ocklye cookery book published in 1909. The book is described as ‘recipes by a lady and her cook’, which might sound a bit off-putting but it's actually a very usable and varied set of recipes. Well, mostly usable - I wouldn't advise trying to find sun-dried turtle in your local supermarket. Eleanor Jenkinson (the lady) was the author of the book but I think we should be celebrating the skill of Annie Hobden (the cook), who had rather a lot to do with it. 1 tsp white wine vinegar ½ tsp tarragon vinegar ½ tsp Dijon mustard 2 tsp runny honey 2 ...

I first ate this cake many moons ago in Sarlat in the Dordogne (or the Périgord Noir if you prefer). It's a town with an abundant supply of walnuts, as well as a truly excellent market. In my selfless struggle to make as many French cakes as possible I decided to recreate this little treat. I soon realised that there were almost as many variants of this cake as there are geese around Sarlat (and that's a lot of geese). At long last this is the version that I think comes closest to that original cake and happily it's also just about the simplest. This really is a cake, honest, but I think of it mostly as a dessert. Small pieces are really good with an espresso or some classic, strong tea but I think it comes into its own when served warm or cold as a dessert with apple or rhubarb compote or poached pear and crème fraîche. It’s also very pleasing when drizzled with dark chocolate. It's possible to buy ground walnuts and that's the easiest way to make this cake b...

Venison is excellent in slow-cooked casseroles but they're often very rich and heavy. There's nothing wrong with that on cold, dark evenings in winter, but sometimes I'd welcome something a little less hefty. This dish uses a classic venison casserole approach but gives a lighter, fruitier result without losing the characteristic flavour of the meat. I admit that this is an odd combination of ingredients but I've never been very good at the authenticity malarkey. I find gin very useful in cooking, especially with game or as part of a cure for fish. Not long ago I was using some gin as part of a marinade and it occurred to me that I could have a special bottle in the cupboard that would have “marinade” flavours built in. So I made a supercharged, marinade gin as follows. Take a half bottle of gin (a decent supermarket London dry gin will do) and add a few extra juniper berries, a few pink peppercorns and 2 reasonably large sprigs of rosemary to the bottle. Reseal it,...