A Tale of Piggery and Revolution …. Fidel Castro on a Plate

Posted on March 14, 2013 by Fiona

In homage to the manly spirit of revolutionary Fidel Castro and his partiality for all things porcine, I decided to try my hand at making Lechón Asado. It sounded simple. What would I need? A suckling pig. A spit. Oranges. Rum.

First came the pig … ordered from my local butchers, it set me back by about £120. But that wasn’t the worst of it; I hadn’t really appreciated the proportions of a pig. What you are doing, really, is collecting a corpse. A body. And what’s more a body you will feel guilty about, a sweet-snouted, innocent BABY pig, with kindly, little eyes, fully-lashed. It died because you ordered it so. Nor can you just slope along the road, pop into the butcher, shake out a Tesco plastic bag and be done with it. No, you will need a car and black plastic bags on which to place the pig’s corpse.

Should you get home without someone performing a citizen’s arrest on you, you have to find somewhere big enough to a) marinade the pig and b) keep it relatively cool for the 48 hour marinading process. Bleakly, I cast about my small single-bedroomed flat. The fridge could accommodate something trotter-sized. There was only one answer: the bath tub. Eventually the pig, bound in black plastic and sloshing about in marinade, was ready and I hefted it over the side of the bath. All else went according to plan but about a month later I had a deep, spiritually uplifting dream in which the piglet, holy light shining through it bat ears, embraced me and forgave me for the indignities I’d subjected it to …

Lechón Asado

The traditional dressing drizzled over lechón asado is ajilimojili, a wickedly delicious sauce of garlic, chillies, vinegar, lime juice, salt and olive oil. Lechón asado is served with arroz congri (red beans with rice).

First came the pig …
Ingredients
1 whole suckling pig, about 20 lbs. in weight, emptied, cleaned and opened in half through the belly.
10 sour oranges – Seville oranges will do
a bottle of brown rum
3 cups of muscovado sugar
8 chipotle chillies, crushed
Achiote colouring
24 cloves of garlic, crushed
3 tablespoons of oregano
¾ cup of salt
1 tbsp. whole black peppercorns
Banana leaves

Method
2 days before you intend to cook the pig, begin to marinade it. Firstly, place the pig in a large basin ( polite term for a bath). Crush together the chipotle chillies, garlic, peppercorns, oregano, black peppercorns and salt. Make deep scores over the pig and rub the marinade into the gashes and inside of the pig.

Baste with achiote and squeeze enough sour oranges to allow the pig to ‘bathe’ in the juice. Pour in the bottle of rum. Cover with foil and refrigerate. Every few hours baste the pig again.

Decide whether you want to cook the pig by the ‘burial’ method in an underground oven or whether you would like to spit roast it. If you opt to spit roast the pig, then you will need to invest in a motor for turning the carcass – or some weary, half-drunk soul will have to spend about 9 hours laboriously trying to turn a pig which will invariably roll back to its favoured position (my preferred method).

The ‘burial’ method

After the two days have passed, dig a pit large enough to accommodate the pig (hope that some neighbour doesn’t report you to the police). Line the base of the pit with piles of banana leaves (these protect the pig from acquiring any earthy residue). Remove the pig from the marinade and discard the marinade. Place the pig on top of the banana skins. Assemble another layer of banana leaves over the pig and place on top several large aluminium sheets big enough to completely cover the hole. Build a wood fire over this. Light it and keep it going. The pig will slowly cook over 9 to 10 hours. You can test the meat by pricking it with a fork, when the juice runs clear, the pig is ready to eat.

After 9 hours the skin becomes very crisp and the pig is covered in a thin caramel layer of crackling. Test it is cooked by pricking the thigh with the point of a knife: if the liquid runs clear, the meat is done.

The spit-roast method

Drain the marinade from the pig and keep to one side: in an act of obeisance, you can brush the pig with the marinade every twenty minutes or so once it starts cooking. Next, pass a metal pole through the pig. Cut a slit just under the tail and thread the pole through this and out of the pig’s mouth. Tie the front legs very tightly and securely around the pole. Do the same with the hind legs, stretching them out as far as possible.

Place the pig over an open fire of hot charcoal placed over layers of stone, resting both ends of the pole on Y-posts. Rotate the pole slowly and constantly in order to roast pig evenly, and baste frequently with the marinade.

Cook for about seven hours, or until the meat is well-done. Test in the same way as is suggested for the buried pig.

Ajilimojili

Ingredients
6 scotch bonnet chillies, seeded
6 bell peppers, 4 red and 2 green, seeded
8 black peppercorns
8 garlic cloves, peeled
3 tsps sea salt
a small bunch fresh coriander
½ cup malt vinegar
1 cup lime juice
1 cup olive oil

Method
Puree all the ingredients in a food processor, other than the oil, black peppercorns, sea salt and vinegar. Now add the vinegar, black peppercorns, sea salt and olive oil. Process the Ajilimojili once more. It is now ready to drizzle over the roasted pork.

Arroz Congrí

Ingredients
12 oz. red beans
¼ lb. smoked ham
¼ lb. chorizo sausages
3 tbsp. olive oil
4 garlic cloves, peeled and roughly chopped
2 medium onions, chopped
2 tsp. sea salt
2 red bell peppers, finely chopped
1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
½ tsp. brown sugar
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. dried oregano
2 cups long-grain rice

Method
Soak the beans in a large pot with water for at least 8 hours or overnight.

Next, bring the beans to a boil, reduce the heat and let cook for up to an hour and a half or until tender, adding water if necessary. Cut the smoked ham into medium sized pieces, and add to the bean pot. Cook for a further 10 minutes.

Dice the chorizo. Heat the 3 tbsp. of olive oil in a deep pan. Add the onion, garlic and bell peppers and fry over a medium heat until they are tender. Now add the chorizo pieces and fry these for 5 minutes.

Drain the beans and smoked ham, reserving the cooking liquor and add the beans and ham to the deep pan. Now add 5 cups of the cooking liquor to the pan: you can discard the remaining liquid. Increase the heat and add the cumin, oregano, sugar, sea salt, black pepper and rice. Do not cover. Cook for 15-20 minutes until the liquid has been absorbed. Next, break the rice up with a fork, cover, turn the heat down to very low and cook for another 10 minutes.

You Only Eat Twice

Posted on October 25, 2012 by The Gastrodetective

Daniel Craig is James Bond 007 | "Casino Royale (2006)" is an MGM Property

Bond Born at Breakfast

He could savour a canapé while dodging bullets, eyeing women, and downing martinis. Who? James Bond and his creator, Ian Fleming. But nowhere are Fleming and Bond more alike than in their grub. Both loved caviar, sauce béarnaise, lobster with melted butter and Jamaican curried goat. Indeed, Bond was invented at breakfast in Fleming’s Jamaican retreat, Goldeneye. Fleming was just polishing off breakfast – probably his usual treat of fresh, sweet paw-paw with a slice of green lime, scrambled eggs, nearly-black Jamaican marmalade and Blue Mountain coffee. It was January 1952, Fleming was 43 and soon to marry Anne Rothermere. On the verge of middle-age and at the anxious edge of marriage, perhaps Fleming sought perpetual youth and bachelordom in Bond?

Ebury Street

But Bond was in the making long before that breakfast and nowhere more obviously than in Fleming’s eating history. When Fleming moved into 22A Ebury Street he founded his own Etonian private dining club Le Cercle Gastronomique et des Jeux de Hasard. The club’s mission? To improve the palate and discover the perfect meal. But girls didn’t get a look-in: if invited round for dinner they ate old kedgeree. The perfect woman, Fleming claimed, should be ‘double-jointed, [know] when to keep quiet and make sauce béarnaise.’

Fleming, Ian Fleming

Golden Eye, Nose and Throat Set

Perhaps Fleming’s ideal woman lay in the fleshly proportions of Violet, his housekeeper at Goldeneye. She reported: ‘The Commander just like all things easy here. […] He just love shrimp and fish and oxtail and liver … fish soup and black crab soup and calah soup – that Jamaican dish we make him with spinach. […] He no like make-up pudding. He like guava and stew tamborine […] The fish he like real special is kingfish and butter fish and snapper fish and goat fish […] the Commander real crazy about goat fish.’ In fact, the word ‘goat’ seemed to do it for Fleming. A regular on the Goldeneye menu was goat curry; a scrumptious stew that cooks in its own rich gravy. One wonders how that went down with British visitors.

Moving unruffled through the upper crust of society, Fleming’s food biography is packed with canasta games and conch gumbo feasts with the likes of Noël Coward and Somerset Maugham. All served up in Jamaica with another Fleming creation – the lethal rum punch ‘Poor Man’s Thing’. Food was dangerous: Coward crossed himself before each mouthful of salt fish and stewed ackee fruit – ‘Ian,’ he’d plead, ‘it tastes like armpits!’ In his Memoirs Coward points out the irony that Fleming’s dinner guests would sit bleakly toying with an octopus tentacle, reflecting on all those delicious meals Ian put into his novels. The disappointment was palpable. Having rented Goldeneye from Fleming in 1948, Coward renamed it ‘Golden Eye, Nose and Throat’, for Goldeneye boasted all the ‘discomforts of a hospital.’.

Ian Fleming’s Curry Goat

An understanding butcher can get goat meat. Ask the butcher to prepare the meat for you. You don’t want to be left wrestling with a goat’s leg in the suburban confines of your kitchen …

Ingredients

Marinade (overnight)

3 lbs lean goat meat, in 2-inch cubes
Juice of one lime
6 cloves of garlic, crushed
2 large onions, sliced
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons black pepper
2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves
2 teaspoons Jamaican jerk seasoning
1 tablespoon curry powder
1 teaspoon finely chopped Scotch bonnet pepper
2 large tomatoes, chopped
3 – 4 tablespoons fresh coriander

To cook

4 oz butter
4 tablespoons oil
1 teaspoon brown sugar
6 scallions, finely sliced
3 potatoes, peeled and cubed

Method

Place the cubed goat in a container; drizzle with lime juice. Add the crushed, sticky garlic, chopped coriander, tomatoes and onions. Next add the curry powder, jerk seasoning, raw thyme, salt, pepper and Scotch bonnet pepper. Massage this marinade into the meat. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

The next day, melt the butter and oil in a pot, add the sugar and stir until the sugar melts. Add the goat and scallions. Stir. Place a lid on the pot, turn the heat down low and allow the goat to simmer gently in its own juices for 2 hours. Check regularly so it doesn’t dry out – generally, you won’t have to add any water as the curry produces its own rich gravy.

After 2 hours, add the potatoes and 2 tablespoons of water. Cover again and simmer for about 25 minutes, until the potato softens.

Serve with Jamaican coconut rice and beans – and a tumbler of Poor Man’s Thing!

Jamaica and the Royals

The Jamaica set mingled with the Royals: Fleming advised Princess Margaret on what she should eat in 1955 Jamaica, making her stay jollier despite her being under orders not to dance with black Jamaicans. Noël Coward almost had his comeuppance when the Queen Mum came to lunch in 1965 – he primed her with several Bullshots before daring to feed her curry. The European fish mousse Coward had made earlier had become ‘a collapsed Slazenger tennis ball.’ But the curry was a great success, served out of steaming coconuts and topped off with a rum cream pie. With the Queen Mum’s ability to unblinkingly knock back Bullshots, you can understand why Hitler described her as the most dangerous woman in Europe.

The Real Bond Appetite

Film versions of Bond’s appetites and the real Bond appetite are very different. The real Bond never stops eating. Before James does anything, he needs a full tummy. Yes, he looked forward to supper more than sex. In Casino Royale Bond ponders the wiles of his arch-enemy, the flagellant Le Chiffre (based on another gourmand, Aleister Crowley), over breakfast – Bond’s first detailed meal. ‘[Bond] looked out at the beautiful day and consumed half a pint of iced orange juice, three scrambled eggs and bacon and a double portion of coffee without sugar.’ Greedy? You bet! Fleming always had his eye on extra helpings. A coffee had to be double; and he was picky too: a boiled egg at breakfast had to be brown-shelled. Bond only ever has one pre-dinner drink, but quibbles, ‘[it should be] very large and very strong […] I hate small portions of anything.’

Bond goes on a dinner date with Vesper Lynd. Both start with caviar, but part company over the main course, Vesper opting for ‘plain grilled rognon de veau with pommes soufflés’ and a girly ‘fraises des bois with a lot of cream’. Macho Bond prefers ‘a very small tournedos, underdone, with sauce Béarnaise and a coeur d’artichaut.’ Of course, Vesper is a double agent for the Russians, killing herself after a Bridget Jones-style mini-break in France with Bond (having nursed him through illness with stories of meals she has enjoyed recently). Despite tragedy looming, Fleming can’t resist mentioning that Madame la patronne prepared ‘broiled lobsters with melted butter’ for the doomed couple.

Fleming and JFK

Fleming himself was no stranger to espionage – on a secret mission for the Foreign Office he ate caviare, cream and Russian pancakes on the train to Moscow. Typically, he has left us with a tantalising, unsolved dining mystery: what Georgetown fare did Fleming tuck into with JFK as they plotted to humiliate Castro (or at least make his beard fall out with depilatory powder)? Does anybody know?

Poor Man's Thing

Poor Man’s Thing

Place a pan over a medium heat. In it, melt a tablespoon of butter, tip in a cup of dark, treacly muscovado sugar. Stir. When the sugar melts, add the grated zest of one orange and one lemon. Stir well. Add 2 cups of fresh orange juice. Heat. Now, pour in a bottle of cheap Three Daggers Rum (reserve a few tablespoons in case ignition needs some encouragement). Heat till very hot and set alight. Add those spare tablespoons if it’s not playing along and try again. When the surface is being licked by blue flames turn out all the lights and carry Poor Man’s Thing in to your guests. Put out the flames before serving.

Ok, if you’re too scared, try a Bond martini instead

The Bond Martini

The Bond Martini

Half fill an ice-cold cocktail shaker with crushed ice. Pour in 3 measures of Gordon’s gin, 1 measure of vodka and a half measure of Kina Lillet. Put the lid on and shake like crazy. Pour the strained martini into deep champagne goblets and add a long, slim strip of lemon peel.

Like most adults, Fiona Ross leads a double-life: her (damnably attractive) double works as a gastro-detective whose HQ is the famous Bodleian Library; she spends her time there pondering what sandwich filling she would prefer for lunch when she is not hot on the trail of a famous or infamous gastronome. Her set of cookery books, Dining with Destiny, are the result of just such weighty thoughts – oh, and a take on history which means she can never recall anything boring like the date of a war but can always be counted upon to remember how much jam Marx liked on his tarts. Time will tell which is the more important.

Dining with Destiny is a series in search of a publisher.

Extract from THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL: FREUDIAN SUPPERS …

Posted on September 17, 2012 by Fiona

Freud at lunch with his daughter, Anna, taken from http://www.freud-sigmund.com/photos-sigmund-freud-family

If you imagine that the pioneer of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, got his greatest kicks from the female hysterics on his couch or a ripe set of spooky dreams about teeth or penises to interpret, how wrong you are. In fact, Freud affirms what everyone who has spent time on an analyst’s couch suspects: your analyst is watching the clock. Although Freud seemed to be staring at the carpet while he puzzled over your relationship with your mother, he secretly used his dog, a chow called Jofi, to execute a cunning plan: Freud never had to clock-watch as Jofi would always hop up and stretch when the session was running over time, allowing Freud to plan his exit from the session and escape (unlike you) from your mother fixation.

Freud’s famous couch (minus Jofi), taken from http://en.wikipedia.org

And as much as he was the father of modern psychoanalysis, Freud was the father of food foraging: he could think of few things he’d rather do with his time than go on a walk in the countryside and hunt around for free, wild food; if he was still with us now he’d probably be a freegan. It delighted him to scrabble about the fields and hedgerows collecting wild berries. In the early summer Freud loved picking pinkly sweet wild strawberries, while the early autumn would offer up purple blackberries and winey bilberries, the bloom rubbing off on Freud’s fingers.

But most of all, Freud was a sucker for mushrooms in every conceivable form – funghi hunting in the mountains and pine forests of favourite foraging places like Alt-Aussee was one of his grand passions – and his foraging style was remarkable. Donning his favourite sea-green velour forager’s hat (tied about and adorned with a generous swathe of dark green silken ribbon), Freud gathered his team of six children together (they referred to themselves as a platoon), and encouraged them to scoop up all the wild funghi they could find for him to identify, pronouncing each specimen edible or inedible. He armed himself with a little flat silver tin whistle, which he’d blow on sharply whenever he found a perfect funghi. Freud would always make sure he flung his hat over the funghi before he blew his whistle. The flying hat and the shrill whistle would alert his platoon to the discovery.

Freud (in hat!) and Anna, image taken from en.wikipedia.org

They’d then take their mushroomy harvest back to Mrs. Martha Freud’s kitchen where Mrs. F., ably assisted by her spinster sister, Minna (a permanent resident with Martha and Sigmund following the death of her fiancée), would pick through the dun and violet funghi, cleaning and skinning them. Mrs. F. would then tell the cook exactly how to cook each different type: at the right time of the year, with the right kind of conditions, there’d be scrumptious mushrooms at every meal.

Bay Bolete mushroom (Boletus badius) - Marone Braunkappe

Alt-Aussee Wild Mushrooms

Ingredients

1 lb. wild mushrooms, cleaned – very roughly chop the large mushrooms, keep the smaller mushrooms intact.
1 tbsp. olive oil
3 tbsp. butter
1 clove of garlic, pulped
2 shallots, very finely chopped
1 tbsp. of fresh, green chives, finely chopped (don’t hesitate to use the bushy, purple chive flowers too)
1 tbsp. of fresh flat-leaf parsley
1 tsp. of finely chopped lovage leaf (optional)
A dash of soured cream (optional)
Sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Method

In a large, wide frying pan, heat the olive oil and melt the butter at a high heat until they foam. Add the garlic, shallot and mushrooms. Sprinkle on the sea salt and black pepper. Fry for 3 minutes, stirring every 30 seconds with a spurtle or wooden spoon. By now, the mushrooms should have softened and be bright with a glossy, confident sheen and you should add the chives, parsley and lovage. Stir through for a further minute. Now add a dash of soured cream …

When they weren’t tucking into the spoils of Freud’s foraging, the family still loved their mealtimes in the sedate domesticity of their flat at Bergasse 19, Vienna, where Sigmund set up home for forty-seven years, from 1891 to 1938, at which point they emigrated to Britain – four of Freud’s sisters were to die in concentration camps. But in those happier, earlier years, before the horror loomed, the Freuds would gather at Freud’s mum, Amalia’s, house for key festivities – though not necessarily the expected Jewish ones. It may have been something to do with her being a Galician Jew, but Amalia was, with brilliant perversity, very keen on Christmas … Amalia was a little stick of dynamite right into her dotage, for instance, taken to buy a hat in her nineties she rejected the one she tried on in the mirror, shouting deafly, “I won’t take this one, it makes me look old.” Amalia’s culinary homage to Christmas was a real treat (though Freud would always turn up late, causing Amalia to scurry about in a panic, imagining him dead or vanished) with goose roasted to deep honey-gold perfection, frosted indulgent cakes, homemade punch and stickily candied fruit.

Freud got off with being late for Amalia’s Xmas dinner but would never have been let off the hook by Mrs. F, who was a stickler for meal times: at 1pm on the dot every day the Freuds had to show up for lunch, the Mittagessen, their main meal of the day, with the tastiest food the Austrian table could offer – the maid sailed in with the soup and Freud’s study door was flung open to ensure his arrival at the table, where he was to sit at the head, while Mrs. F sat at the foot.

Freud at home in his study ... lunch awaits ... image taken from en.wikipedia.org

Their eating choices always seasonal and the Freuds stuck to a three-course menu of soup, meat and veg and a dessert. In springtime, though, as if in homage to the green freshness of that season, there was always an additional course of asparagus. The warmth of the summer was signalled by plump, buttercup-gold cobs of fresh corn or scrumptious Italian-style artichokes, stuffed with a delicate combination breadcrumbs, parmesan, garlic, lemon zest and mint, much adored by Freud, who would have had his eye on a second helping.

Artichokes

Sigmund’s Summer Italian Artichokes

Ingredients

1 cup of freshly made bread crumbs – try and use really good bread, such as stale Sourdough – it will give more texture to your stuffing
¾ cup of finely grated Parmesan cheese
½ tbsp. fresh parsley, finely chopped
½ tbsp. fresh mint, finely chopped (you can alternate this with the same amount of fresh oregano)
the zest of half a lemon
1 clove of minced garlic
pinch of sea salt
freshly ground pepper
4 large artichokes
4 tbsp. olive oil
2 cloves of garlic, sliced finely

Method

In a bowl, combine the breadcrumbs, Parmesan, parsley, mint/oregano, minced garlic, lemon zest, 2 tbsp. of olive oil, sea salt and pepper. Get a pot just large enough to fit the artichokes and which will allow you to pack them in tightly.

Wash the beautifully sculptural artichokes (Pliny had the cheek to call them one of ‘earth’s monstrosities’ back in 77 BC, but what did he know?) Rub some lemon juice into your hands before handling the artichokes – this will stop them from staining your hands. Chop off their stems at exactly that point where the stem meets the base of the artichoke – this will give each choke a flat base on which to stand in the pot they’ll cook in (though packing them tightly together will also keep them upright). Clip off the sharp, pointed leaves from the top of the chokes. Gently spread and tease out the leaves of each choke and, using your fingers still, push and pack the stuffing in between each of the leaves.

Keeping the chokes upright, pack them in the pot - handling them carefully so that the stuffing doesn’t spill. Pop the slices of garlic between the chokes and drizzle the remaining two tablespoons of olive oil over the chokes. Put the kettle on.

Under the pot, turn the heat up to medium. When you hear the artichokes start to sizzle, maintain the heat for 2 minutes. Now, without pouring water over the artichokes, by running it down the side of the pot, add enough hot water (from the kettle) to reach half-way up the pot. Put a lid on the pot and cook until the artichokes are tender … you know the artichokes are tender when a single leaf can be pulled easily away from the choke. Take the time to reflect on the fact that California nominated Marilyn Monroe the ‘Artichoke Queen’ in 1947, leading to more people eating artichokes than ever before or since. But don’t forget to take a peek in the pot every so often – you don’t want the liquid to evaporate, so add a little more water if necessary – the whole cooking process shouldn’t take much more than 45 minutes.

After 45 minutes are up and the chokes are tender, they are ready to serve. They are so delicious and each choke really is a little bowl of heaven: you will be ready afterwards to lie back on the sofa and think of Freud fondly …

Coming forth from the Freud family kitchen was the other juicy and tasty foodstuff Freud couldn’t get enough of: Rindfleisch, known to you and me as beef, but which in German sounds like a type of flagellation. Freud liked to eat it at least three times a week, often more, with lots of different sauces and cooked in as many as seven different ways by Mrs. F, who was privy to the best Viennese secret cookery recipes.

Rindfleisch in the form of Viennese Beef Goulash

Viennese Rindfleisch Goulash

Ingredients

3 tbsp. beef dripping
2 lb. stewing beef (it should have some fat marbling, to break up in the stewing process)
2lb. shallots
1 tbsp. plain flour
2 tbsp. tomato puree
2 tbsp. wine-red Hungarian Paprika
Grated zest of ¼ unwaxed lemon
2 tsp. roughly ground caraway seeds
2 pulped cloves of garlic, pounded in a mortar and pestle with the caraway seeds
1 tbsp. freshly chopped marjoram
3 green bay leaves
4 pressed and cracked juniper berries
2 large tomatoes, roughly chopped
1 pint of beef stock (many recipes call for chicken stock, but in deference to Freud’s esteem for this splendid bird, I think we’ll leave that out)
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

to garnish …

3 tbsp. sheep’s milk yoghurt – or 3 tbsp. sour cream
2 tbsp. finely chopped flat leaf parsley

Method

Warm the beef dripping in a deep pot. Brown the chunks of beef in the dripping, a couple at a time and remove with a slotted spoon, keep aside. Add the shallots and cook them gently until they turn dark gold. Return the beef to the pot. Sprinkle on the tbsp. of plain flour and coat the beef with it. Add the tomato puree, paprika, grated lemon zest, caraway seed/garlic mush, marjoram, bay leaves, juniper berries, sea salt and black pepper. Add the roughly chopped tomatoes. Pour in the beef stock and bring the goulash to the boil. Turn the heat to low-medium and simmer gently for two and a half hours, till the meat is really tender.

Ladle the goulash onto a serving platter, spoon over dollops of the sheep’s milk yoghurt/sour cream and sprinkle with parsley. Serve with buttered noodles …

To top off lunch, there might be a beautifully crafted and executed Mehlspeise such as a buttery and complex Apfelstrudel – Apple Strudel!

Mrs F’s Apfelstrudel

Forget about wussy sheets of filo pastry: in the old Austrian version of Apfelstrudel, the pungent and sweet cinnamon apples are encased in a tunnel of unleavened pastry …

Ingredients

For the strudel dough

300g. (2 ½ cups) strong, white bread flour
½ tsp. crumbled sea salt
1 ½ tbsp. butter
200 ml. dry white wine
Plus 2 tbsp. melted butter for brushing the dough

For the breadcrumb finish to the dough …

3 ½ tbsp. unsalted butter
100 g freshly made white breadcrumbs

For the apple filling …

2¼ lb. cooking apples
1 unwaxed lemon, zested and juiced
3 ½ tbsp. vanilla sugar
1 ½ tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
1 tsp. ground cloves
2 ½ tbsp. of raisins, pre-soaked for 3 hours in 2 tbsp. rum
2 ½ tbsp. toasted, flaked almonds

For the Apfelstrudel glaze …

one egg white, beaten
2 tbsp. apricot jam, warmed and melted to glaze
powder-white icing sugar for dusting

for serving …

vanilla custard, flavoured with a tot of dark rum

Method

The Apfelstrudel is a funny old creature of a cake, which you make from the inside out, as you’ll see. About 3 hours before you are going to begin to make the Apfelstrudel, soak the raisins in the rum: this requires forethought, of which many of us – I for one – am not always capable …

Three hours later (and possessed of forethought), you begin by preparing the many other different elements of the Apfelstrudel filling. First you are going to make the buttery breadcrumb sprinkles that you’ll use to line the dough. In a small frying pan, heat 3 ½ tbsp. unsalted butter until it foams. Throw in the 100g of freshly made white breadcrumbs and toast them in the butter, stirring constantly, until they are a medium brown colour (yes, the colour of toast!)

Assemble the apple mixture that will make up the scrumptious core of the strudel. Peel and core the apples, then chop them up. Pour on the lemon juice and lemon zest and stir to coat the apples. Next, add the vanilla sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, raisins fat with rum, and toasted almonds. Reserve this lovely, chunky apple goo.

Now it is time to make the strudel dough. Brace yourself. Sift the flour and sea salt into a large, wide bowl. Get a wooden spoon, make a small well in the centre of the flour and begin to add the white wine, stirring it through the flour. Now add the melted 1 ½ tbsp. of butter. Using your hands, knead the dough for about 5 minutes until it is smooth, silky and blisters slightly. Brush the dough with the remaining 2 tbsp. of melted butter, cover with a clean cloth and leave in a warm place for one hour.

After the hour is up, turn the pastry out onto a large, flour-dusted board. Lightly flour a clean dish towel and tip the pastry onto it. Using your floury fingertips, gently press and stretch the dough into a rectangular shape, thinning it – but not so that it is newspaper thin (which many strudel recipes suggest) as this may well break and allow the rich, musky apple juices to leech out, ruining the dough and diminishing the succulence of the filling. Instead, the dough should be reasonably thin. Very thick edges should be trimmed off, still retaining a rectangular shape on top of the floured cloth that lies beneath it.

It is now time for the fried, buttery breadcrumbs: sprinkle these over the pastry. Get ready a baking tray. Butter it lightly and then flour it. Position it immediately beside your pastry, ready to have the completed strudel placed on it. Drain off any excess liquid that may have formed in your apple mixture.

Load the edge of dough nearest to you with the scrumptious apple goo, forming a long strip of apple – and not too close to the edge, leave an inch spare. Fold in the top and bottom of the rectangle. Very carefully, using the cloth to help you manipulate the dough, begin to roll the Apfelstrudel into a long Swiss roll shape. Begin, of course, with the edge with the filling. Roll up completely. You should now have an Apfelstrudel that resembles in shape a Swiss roll. Again, using the cloth, shift the Apfelstrudel gently onto the baking tray, shaping it now into a crescent shape. Put this in the fridge and allow it to chill for 10 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 200°C.

Brush the Apfelstrudel with more melted butter. Place it in the oven and bake at 200°C for 20 minutes. Turn down the oven to 180, use a brush at this point to pick up any juice that may have seeped out and spread this over the Apfelstrudel. Peek in every so often to check its not darkening too much and if it looks as if it might be, then cover it with tin foil. Cook for a further 40 minutes.

Remove the strudel from the oven, brush the top with melted hot apricot glaze and sprinkle with powdered sugar. Slice and serve with rum scented thin vanilla custard.

Even Sigmund Freud’s food hate list makes one pause for thought: what was his aversion to cauliflowers about? Their pellucid whiteness? Their resemblance to peeled brains? And what was going on when he refused to eat chickens – was it because they were female? Or reproducers of eggs? Did he see eggs as sacred? All he tells us gruffly is: “One should not kill chickens, let them stay alive and lay eggs.” Sensible? But why? And in a brilliant little familial piece of reverse psychology, all of the platoon of Freud children secretly longed for chicken … were their actions Oedipal when they ate it in spite of his rule?

Indeed, every single one of his aversions offers psychoanalytic fun: where did Freud’s hatred of bicycles come from? Or love of corn on the cob – were they golden phalluses? … such mysteries!

Kookys: Hashish Fudge and Mars Bar Madness with the Rolling Stones

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Fiona

Perhaps the Dining with Destiny moment that is most remembered about the Rolling Stones is the notorious Mars Bar sex scandal of February 1967. The police stealthily planned an armed swoop on the Stone’s smelly den of vice, Keith Richard’s Redlands mansion (he’d bought it in 1966) … No less than 19 of Britain’s finest police officers lurked around the shrubbery outside: only those high as rockets on Benzedrine and White Lightning could fail to spot these bulky blue-clad shapes in the privet in front of Keith Richard’s door, poised to swoop on the groovy party inside. At their knock, Keith stumbled to the door to answer … in an unlikely moment of drug-induced, cross-generational gallantry he had thought that an elderly pensioner (and not a police detective) was rapping on his door to ask for his autograph.

©Wikipedia

Police bellowed and charged past Richards, only to screech to a halt before Mick Jagger, his head buried between Marianne Faithfull’s legs, eating a Mars Bar. Never ever had Scotland Yard seen the like … It took all of about three hours for this to leak to the press (later a furious Jagger wanted to sue News of the World). But the chocolate story stuck (boom boom) – when the court eventually listened to testimony about the Redlands raid later that year, the Stone’s own lawyer, Sir Michael Havers, was forced to admit that when he’d prowled around Redlands post-raid he had, indeed, come across a stash of Mars Bars …

Mars Bar Love

Ingredients
1 Mars Bar

1 Marianne Faithfull

Method

Enjoy!

Further food controversy hit the headlines at Mick’s court appearance following the Mars incident. Handcuffed to old Etonian Robert Fraser, with whom he was being held in Lewes jail, Jagger had the cheek to order a lunch delivery from a local hotelier, come the midday adjournment. The press reported, in scandalised, admiring tones, that the unrepentant Jagger lounged around, enjoying a lunch of prawn cocktail, roast lamb with mint sauce on the side, followed by strawberries and cream, washed down with a bottle of Beaujolais nonetheless.

Indeed, such tales come as no surprise: our Mick is very good at taking care of yours truly in tough times: studying as a student at LSE, and sharing digs with poor boys Keith Richards and Brian Jones, Jagger enjoyed comparatively indolent life on £2 a week, a fine income combined of parental handouts, a government student grant and income from singing for Blues Incorporated. Meanwhile Richards and Jones were on the verge of rabid starvation … but did Mick share his spoils? No! He’d sneak off for fancy, delicious restaurant meals while his flatmates resorted to filching food from the local grocery.

©Wikipedia

Similar meanness was apparent when he went out for dinner with fashion photographer David Bailey: Jagger was encouraged by Bailey to leave a tip of £10 for the waiting staff but, as they left the restaurant, out of the corner of his eye, Bailey caught sight of Jagger nipping back, secretly retrieving the tip, and slipping it into his pocket. Lucky, then, that Mars Bars were so cheap …

Sneaky Mick could use food and drink to get what he wanted too: when he first met Marianne Faithfull in March 1964, in the midst of a torrid argument with Chrissie Shrimpton, his girlfriend of the time, when she was so upset that her eyelashes had begun to slide off with her tears, he deliberately tripped and emptied a glass of Dom Perignon down her thin blouse.

Things didn’t get much more glamorous straight away for Marianne. She’d get stoned with the band at Brian Jones’ and Keith Richard’s grimy pad at Courtfield Road, which was a mass of dirty dishes, and then, about 10 at night, Marianne said, “We’d stagger out to Alvaro’s for some wonderful pasta. But once we got there we’d be so stoned we could barely manage more than a mouthful. I’d stare at the exquisite china and watch the tiny dragons crawl over the fettuccine.” Marianne seems positively streetwise though compared to Jaggers’ future wife, Argentinian Bianca Perez Morena de Macias, who he met in 1970 and wooed over caviar and Louis Cristal champagne. She’s already been groomed for the high life by her well-to-do, doting parents and her previous lover, Michael Caine, with whom she’d lived in the Dorchester Hotel, an experience about which she drawled: ‘I never washed a dish, boiled an egg or cleaned.’ You always know, don’t you, that people are really well off when they live in hotels like the Dorchester – the most I could ever afford would be a weekend bargain-break there … or a visit to the loo in order to steal some commemorative Dorchester toilet roll …

Visiting Marrakesh in March 1967 must have seemed either a good idea or a good publicity stunt so soon after the Redlands raid. The Stones drew up at a decadent hotel in Marrakesh, having migrated from London to Morocco (they purred their way there in Brian Jones’ car from his pad in the Swiss Cottage). They looked like a sulky, drowsy troupe of badly-stitched together gypsies. White-faced Anita Pallenberg, her black hair hanging in big dirty droplets, drifted alongside Brian Jones, like some sort of sexy effluence. Mick Jagger came with a retinue of Americans and Keith Richards had turned his hand to making his own clothes and sported an eighteenth-century suit and his lavender-rose trousers were bursting at the seams. Brian Jones appeared by the poolside, white trousers draped over his tight little buttocks, and a large black square sewn over his rear. Photographer Cecil Beaton, who happened to be in Marrakesh on the same night and in the same hotel, gravitated to Mick, keen to photograph him. Beaton introduced himself and watched Mick elegantly drink a long, frost-cool Vodka Collins, while setting forth his case that Britain was a police state and about his own role as a champion of permissiveness.

Eventually, they decided to go for dinner and Beaton found himself tucked in the back of the Stone’s Bentley, music booming in his ears, amid the litter of porn magazines, brightly coloured fur rugs and pop-art cushions they kept there. When they eventually tumbled out of the car into the brightness of the Moroccan restaurant, Jagger took it upon himself to teach Beaton how to eat tender chicken, Moroccan-style, with his fingertips … Between mouthfuls, he asked Beaton,” Have you ever taken LSD? Oh, I should. It would mean so much to you: you’d never forget the colours. For a painter it is a great experience.’ The painter in Beaton noted that the next day Jagger’s face had collapsed into a pale stew of tiny eyes (which Beaton memorably described as ‘albino-fringed’) and widened nose (the only shade of pink on his face) and that none of the band seemed capable of speech, except in ‘spasms’ … now what do you think they might have been up to overnight?

Vodka Collins

Ingredients

A generous glug of Stolichnaya vodka (about two fingers)

Juice of 1 freshly squeezed lemon

1½ tsp caster sugar

Soda water

Slices of thinly cut orange and lemon

A Maraschino cherry

Method

Put some cubed ice in a cocktail shaker; pour in the Stolichnaya, lemon and sugar. Shake and serve in a Collins glass. Top with a splash or two of soda water. Garnish with orange and lemon slices and one provocative Maraschino cherry.

Moroccan Chicken

Ingredients

1 medium sized, organic chicken, cut into eighths (ask your butcher to do this)

2 tsp powdered cumin

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp paprika

½ tsp powdered saffron

Sea salt

Freshly ground black pepper

6 tbsp butter

2 tbsp olive oil

6 onions, peeled and finely sliced

¼ lb chick peas, soaked overnight and then drained of their water

Freshly ground black pepper

4 cloves of garlic, sliced

2 pints of strong chicken stock

4 tbsp of finely chopped flat-leaf parsley

4 tbsp of finely chopped fresh green coriander

Lemon juice

Method

The night before … rub the chicken with the cumin, paprika, cinnamon, salt and black pepper. Leave to marinade overnight. Put the chickpeas in water overnight too.

The next day, melt the butter and olive oil in a Dutch oven, add the chicken and brown it in the oil. When it is browned, remove the chicken temporarily from the oil. Now add the onions and soften them until they are a warm golden colour. Return the chicken to the pan. Add the garlic and soften this a little. Now add the saffron and chick peas and cover with chicken stock. Simmer this delicious Moroccan stew for an hour, uncovered. Before serving, stir the freshly chopped parsley and coriander into the sauce but give it no more time to cook than the distance from stove to table! To further ‘lift’ the flavour, sprinkle with freshly squeezed lemon juice.

Serve with rice and Vodka Collins.

But before you imagine that that is the end of the adventures of 1967, in July 1967 Jagger reappears with Marianne Faithfull on his arm at a party in honour of the return to London of American Beat poet Alan Ginsberg. The party was rolled out at designer Christopher Gibb’s swish pad on Cheyne Walk (the street on which Jagger and Richards were to buy houses the following year). The sounds of Sergeant Pepper wafted through the air, MPs swayed to the music, a startled curator from the British Museum stood underneath the low lights, Princess Margaret toyed with her drink, Paul Getty II was on his way and, come 10 pm, some bright spark decided it would be a good idea if the butler invited the assembled guests to enjoy delicious hash fudges, served on a silver platter. There was one small problem, though, as a guest recalled, “Back then it was the ‘in’ thing to use the recipe from the Alice B. Toklas Cookbook […] Only this time someone had obviously doubled the recipe. What they were eating was very toxic, very dangerous.”

All hell broke loose as Britain’s finest in music and nobility swayed, burped and collapsed about the room, having overdosed on hashish. Stomachs were pumped that night and Jagger and Faithful took to running up and down the street repeatedly in order to fight the effects of hashish poisoning.

So here it is verbatim, word for word …

“HASHISH FUDGE
(which anyone could whip up on a rainy day)
Take 1 teaspoon black peppercorns, 1 whole nutmeg, 4 average sticks of cinnamon, 1 teaspoon coriander. These should all be pulverised in a mortar. About a handful each of stoned dates, dried figs, shelled almonds and peanuts: chop these and mix them together. A bunch of Cannabis sativa can be pulverised. This along with the spices should be dusted over the mixed fruit and nuts, kneaded together. About a cup of sugar dissolved in a big pat of butter. Rolled into a cake and cut into pieces or made into balls about the size of a walnut, it should be eaten with care. Two pieces are quite sufficient.”

Toklas goes on to suggest that, “Obtaining the Cannabis may present certain difficulties, but the variety known as Cannabis sativa grows as a common weed, often unrecognised, everywhere in Europe, Asia and parts of Africa; besides being cultivated as a crop for the manufacture of rope. In the Americas, while often discouraged, its cousin, called Cannabis indicia, has been observed even in city window boxes. It should be picked and dried as soon as it has gone to seed and while the plant is still green.”

Disappointingly for Cecil Beaton, he met Mick Jagger again in the same month (September 1967) but found he bore little resemblance to the elegant and assured conversationalist of Marrakesh. With a suety-faced, Marianne Faithful stared up from beneath an odd cap of drowned hair while Mick made no move to be polite to Beaton, picking up a picture book to look at. Gone was the Bentley, instead it was a taxi ride to Fulham Road for dinner in the inauspicious-sounding Baghdad House, where Mick ignored Beaton even more fulsomely, looking over his shoulder and mewing that he wanted some ‘fewd’. So much for finger-licking chicken, Jagger shovelled a ‘cake of pap’ into his mouth while Beaton looked on, his idol revealed as clay.

Jagger’s long association with drugs and the immortality that seemed to ensure he never suffered the consequences lent him a dark, bedevilled glamour. Even when he has a secret snack about him it can be ‘read’ wrongly, as when a friend of Andy Warhol’s found a tinfoil-wrapped ‘package’ in his pocket after a wild night out with Jerry Hall and Mick Jagger. What could it be? he wondered … A secret stash of heroin? Cocaine? No! As he carefully unpeeled the foil he exposed … a Rice Crispie cookie!

More famed for audacious acts when eating than for what was on his plate: one evening in a restaurant, when an older gent inquired of Jagger, “Are you a man or a woman?” his reply was to unzip his pants…

Beyond drugs was alcohol, also looming large on the abuse list for the band. At the age of 6, Jade Jagger amazed Andy Warhol by coolly enquiring what he’d like to drink when he visited the Jaggers in New York. When Warhol mentioned he’d quite like vodka on the rocks, Jade, with the assurance of a 54 year old bar tender, bellowed out to the Spanish maid, “Dos vodkas con heilo.” And that was just a Rolling Stone’s child …

By the 1980s, alcoholism had Keith Richards in its tenacious grasp and breakfast was burgers and Black Jack bourbon with an HP sauce chaser and maybe some home fries on the side.

This predilection for HP sauce crops up much earlier in 1964, when the Stones were on tour in Brussels: an aspiring chef made the grave mistake of not researching their individual tastes and so missed Jagger’s loathing of tomatoes, serving them up tomato soup and tomatoes stuffed with shrimps and, on top of having his meal spurned, then felt suicidal and murderous impulses when the Stones further offended by requesting chips and … HP sauce (guess who for?) Indeed, Richard’s HP passion was as much part of 1960s Britain as Carnaby Street – HP was called ‘Wilson’s Gravy’ for a while, after British PM, Harold Wilson’s wife, Mary, told reporters at The Sunday Times, ‘If Harold has a fault, it is that he will drown everything with HP sauce.’

Even HP, or Black Jack, or orange juice and Stolichnaya, however, has not as great a hold on Keith Richard’s affections as one particular dish. Wherever he is out and about in the world, should there be a fridge in his room, look therein and, according to his closest acquaintances, you will find … a Shepherd’s Pie. Richards prides himself on his own belligerence (on the Brussels trip, for instance, he punched someone who suggested the Stones were actually The Supremes). So imagine what he’s like if you go near his Shepherd’s Pie: he experiences tight-lipped anxiety if one (or several) isn’t near to hand. Once a foolish, greedy member of his crew ate Keith’s shepherd’s pie and he, spitting with rage, warned him that next time Richards would dice him into pieces and put his legs in the self-same pie.

Stone’s Shepherd’s Pie

Ingredients

3 tbsps olive oil

1 lb of organic minced beef

3 onions

3 cloves garlic, chopped

3 carrots, scraped and sliced into ¾ inch chunks

1 swede, peeled and diced into rough one or two inch pieces

1 green pepper, roughly chopped

1 tbsp tomato puree

1 tbsp marmite

1 glass of red wine

Hot water

Sea salt

Freshly ground black pepper

For the topping

1 onion, very finely chopped

3 lb potatoes

3 tbsp butter

2 tbsp milk

Sea salt

3 tbsp grated parmesan

Method

Warm the olive oil in a deep, thick-bottomed pan or Dutch oven. Add the onion and cook gently over about 10 minutes, until the onions have turned a pale gold colour. Add the garlic and allow it to cook for a minute. Add the minced beef and brown lightly. Now add the carrots, swede and green pepper. Give this a generous scattering of freshly ground black pepper. Now put in the splodge of tomato puree, the red wine and the marmite. Top with enough hot water to cover the mince stew. Let this bubble away on a medium heat for about 1 hour, until the mince has a thickish gravy around it.

When the mince has been cooking for about 15 minutes, prepare the topping. Peel the potatoes, cut into quarters and place them in a pan of cold, salted water. Bring to the boil and cook for about 20 minutes. Keep testing the potatoes with a fork; they are ready when the fork can spear the potato. When this happens, drain the potatoes, put them back in the pot, place them over a low heat and shake them gently to dry – you will see comforting billows of steam rising from the potatoes. Once they are dry, you’ll see the outside of the potato fluff and scale. Now begin to mash them. Add the butter and mash through the potato and then add the milk. Keep beating the potato until it is smooth and light. If the mince base isn’t ready yet, then keep the potato covered and warmish until the mince is ready.

Heat the oven to 200C.

When the mince is suitably thick, taste it to check whether it needs a little more salt or a splash more wine. Then, pour it into the base of a pie dish. Sprinkle the finely chopped onion over the surface of the mince – this will give a very faint oniony ‘bite’ to the pie when it is ready. Now gently place modest spoonfuls of buttery mashed potato over the surface of the mince. Using a fork, gently drag these islands together to form a smooth crust of potato over the mince. Sprinkle over the parmesan cheese. Cook uncovered, in the oven for 30 minutes.

Serve with cooked frozen peas and a generous dollop of HP sauce. Aaaahhhh.

From The Art of Eating …Lunch with Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo

Posted on December 12, 2011 by Fiona

Portrait of Diego Rivera, 1932 Mar. 19. copyright: Carl Van Vechten

Mexican revolutionary artist and general podge, Diego Rivera, often worked on scaffolding to create his huge murals and his third wife and brilliant fellow artist Frida Kahlo would rustle up special lunchboxes for him, complete with napkins embroidered with, ‘I love you’ and decorated with flowers (a womanly wile taught to Frida by Diego’s long-suffering second wife, Lupe). Diego gruffly tried to refer to them as ‘labourer’s lunchboxes’. Given that two out of his three wives had worked out that the way to Diego’s heart was through his lunchbox, it’s no surprise that Diego was always on the porky side: when Diego visited Los Angeles in the early forties, Frida instructed his host: “Be sure that Diego sees the oculist in Los Angeles. And that he doesn’t eat too many spaghettis so he won’t get too fat.” As a taco, beans and anejo tequila girl herself (she kept spirits in a perfume bottle amongst her skirts – she’d pretend to be about to dab herself with perfume, but then take a quick swig, surprising anyone who caught a glimpse), Kahlo knew how cheering oral gratification could be. Such was the case in 1941, when Diego returned to Mexico from abroad. He always returned in a ‘devilish bad mood’, with a small black tornado of rage whirling after him, until he could acclimatise himself to the jaunty pace of life back home … Two whole miserable weeks had passed this time and he was still feeling pretty sour until two great things happened: kindly friends brought Diego some beautiful idols from Nayarit and seeing these reminded him of why he liked Mexico so very much; then ‘he ate a very delicious duck mole,’ explained Frida, ‘and this also helped to give him back his pleasure in life. He stuffed himself … [and] decided to go out and paint water colours in Xochimilco’.

Mexican food was one of the rich, sustaining influences in Frida and Diego’s marriage. Rivera, if he had been drawing in the local market that morning, couldn’t resist buying Indian huitlacoche for their cook to prepare. At first, the derivation of the word huitlacoche can seem off-putting: either it comes from the Nahuatl word for ‘cuitla’ meaning ‘rear end’ combined with the word ‘cochtli’ meaning ‘to sleep’ … so that shakes out as ‘sleeping excrement’. Or, another parcel of etymologists stands by its true translated meeting as ‘raven’s excrement’. But surely all that is just splitting hairs (or something else)? … Also going by the names of corn smut or corn truffle, huitlacoche looks like a mass of ovalish, pale grey coloured fungi on an ear of corn. Cooked down it becomes black and tarry and has an earthy, mushroomy oomph with a hint of corn. Diego’s cook would have fried it with onion, chillies and the herb epazote, which tastes like powdered green tea with a minty edge and goes by yet another romantic pseudonym: pigweed. Epazote is also used often when cooking glossy black Mexican turtle beans as it is has a reputation as being a great fart preventative!

Along with the huitlacoche, Rivera and Kahlo would lunch on duck mole, with friends like Trotsky (a lover of Frida’s). BeyondTrotsky, a much more constant presence at their table was a bowl of guacamole to dollop on masa harina tortillas. Frida would down her tequila copitas from a red clay cup – she once said, in brilliant despair, “I drank to drown my sorrows, but the damned things learned how to swim.” Lunch would be eaten from earthenware plates, set on a rough wooden table, overlaid with flowered Mexican oilcloth, while Frida’s parrot, Bonita, would try to tiptoe his way around the room to the reach the butter, his favourite snack. Out on the patio was the kingdom of a much larger male parrot, given to drinking beer, who would
croak, “No me pasa la cruda!”

Come the evening, Diego would be greeted by Frida in the twilight by a cup of hot chocolate and a plate of chewy, sweet Mexican pastries called pan dulce which come with many remarkable names to match their shapes such as ‘Bull’s eye’: this looks like a belligerent eyeball; ‘Mule’s leg’ – this seems to have a hoof mark stamped on it; and a croissant-shape pastry called ‘moustache.’

Duck Mole from the Table of Frida and Diego….

Even if you only ever get round to making one mole in the course of your life (it does take about a 6 hour commitment) make sure you do so: a life lived without the experience is an emptier one – a bit like never having seen the Pyramids - as this dish consists of beautiful complex layers, built by the long-forgotten hands of gifted nuns, conquistadors’ servants and brilliant mercurial creatures like Frida Kahlo’s cook, duck mole makers stretching way back through time … and each part of the mole teaches you something profound about what can really be drawn in terms of flavour from the chilli, the pecan, the tomatillo.

It is also an exercise in almost burning things deliberately (in order to achieve the depth of smokiness the mole needs) and stopping things burning accidentally. So, beware: you have to be really hands-on with a mole, a bit like being an Intensive Care nurse …

But the rewards? You can taste a long lazy afternoon meal in the lives of Diego and Frida: the duck mole tastes like the depth, beauty and dignity of their art. There is even the possibility of parrots (tho’ not in your mole) …

Duck with Black Mole

Ingredients
3 wild ducks

The Black Mole …

for the chilli puree …
6 dried chihuacle negro chillies
11 dried mullato chillies
6 dried pasilla chillies
4 dried chipotle meco chillies
1 corn tortilla, torn up into small pieces

for the tomato puree…
3 green tomatoes, chopped (you can substitute red)
3 tomatillos, husked, rinsed and chopped
½ teaspoon epazote
½ tsp thyme
½ cup of duck/chicken stock

for the nut puree …
2 cups of chicken/duck stock
3 tbsps sesame seeds
3 tbsps each of sunflower seeds, pecan nuts, raw peanuts and almonds

for the base mixture …
1 white onion, cut into thick rings
6 cloves of garlic, unpeeled
2 tbsps lard or vegetable oil
2 cloves, freshly ground
1 stick of cinnamon
3 black peppercorns
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 ripe plantain, peeled and cut into slices of about ¼ of an inch
2 slices of dark brown toasted stale bread
1 ½ tbsps raisins

to finish the mole …
3 oz dark Mexican chocolate, broken into small pieces
6 cups of chicken/duck stock
sea salt

Method

Clean the chillies: split them lengthwise, removing their stems and seeds. Unfurl the chillies and stack them, splayed out, ready for the next stage. As you do so, you’ll begin to catch the scented character of each type of chilli: the distinctive honeyed, paprika tones of the chipotle; the treacly, liquorice chambers of the pasilla. Heat an un-oiled skillet, put the torn tortilla pieces into the skillet and allow them to toast to a deep brown, with some blackening. Remove them and keep the broken tortilla to the side. Next, pour the chilli seeds into the pan. Shake the pan to loosen them as they go black – this takes about 20 seconds and you’ll know they’re ready when you get spicy chilli fumes rising. Next, remove them from the pan and pour the blackened seeds in a small bowl. Pour a little cold water over the chilli seeds (just a little, not a pond!). After about 10 minutes, drain the seeds and reserve the chilli water. Whatever you do, do not (as I did) scratch your nose …
Put on the kettle. Heat the skillet again – get it nice and hot – then, in batches, place about 4 splayed chillies at a time flat on the skillet and press down on them for about 10 seconds each side, until they blacken – but don’t carbonise them! You’ll see the beautiful ebony mullato chillies move slightly in the heat, begin to blister and release jet black chilli sap. Prepare to cough! Place each finished batch in a large bowl and, when all the chillies are done, cover them in boiling water and use a plate to weigh them down. Let them soak for 30 minutes. When you drain them, reserve the chilli liquid.

Put the oven on to heat up to 350F or 170C.

Next, return the (still) un-oiled skillet to a medium heat and place the thick onion rings and unpeeled garlic in the pan. Roast them in this dry heat until they darken and soften. The garlic will take longer than the onion, so, when the onion is done, remove it and place in a bowl. When the garlic has caught up, remove it and pop the softened, pulpy sweet garlic out of their now woody carapaces into the bowl.

Now that the oven is hot, put the various nuts on a baking tray – keeping the sesame seeds in their own discrete strip – but also spread them thinly or some will brown while others will remain pale (and consequently be less tasty) and blast them in the oven until they become fragrant and alter in colour – watch this carefully as nuts can burn easily. As soon as they release their nutty aromas and take on a darker gold, remove them from the oven.

Allow the nuts to cool for 5 minutes. Reserve ¼ cup of the toasted sesame seeds for a final garnish of the mole and place the rest of the sesame seeds along with the other nuts in a blender. Add 2 cups of the chicken or duck stock to this and blend to a smooth nut puree (it will smell like roasted chestnuts!) Pour this paste into a bowl.

Next puree the green tomatoes, tomatillos, epazote and thyme, with a further ½ cup of stock, in the nut soaked blender. Reserve in a bowl.

Now drain the chillies. Combine the fiery water from the soaked chilli seeds and the soaked chillies. Put the chillies into the blender in batches to puree; with each batch, add about a third of a cup of the chilli water. When all the chillies are pulped, put a cup of this back into the blender; add the chilli seeds and the toasted tortilla – plus a further third of a cup of chilli water if necessary. Whiz this up until it is smooth. Combine all of this puree and then sieve into a new bowl, in order to remove chilli skins and seeds.

Lightly crush the cloves, fennel seeds, black peppercorns and cinnamon in a mortar and pestle. Heat the skillet and dry fry the spices for a minute. Next, add the oil or lard. Fry the sliced plantain in the oil, turning occasionally, for about 5 minutes. Remove the plantain from the heat. Next, add the raisins to the oil and fry them for a minute. Add the pieces of stale brown bread and fry them in the oil. Place the fried bread, plantain, roasted onion rings, garlic gloop and a ¾ cup of chicken or duck stock in the same, unwashed, nut-and-tomato covered blender. Once it has blended, place in a bowl.

You are getting there …

In a heavy-bottomed, large and deep pot (I use a Dutch oven), heat 3 tbsps of vegetable oil or lard until it is very hot. Add the tomato and tomatillo puree and stir constantly until this mixture becomes dark and thick (it should have the consistency of tomato puree, this might take up to 15 minutes). Add the nut paste and stir again until very thick (7 minutes). Now add the plantain and spice mixture and stir till thick (7 minutes again). Finally, add the chilli paste, turn the heat down to low and allow this to cook for about 25 minutes, stirring frequently. Never take your eye off the pan at this time as the mole can burn very easily, so obsessively stir every couple of minutes. The resultant sauce/paste should be thick and a pitch-deep bluey-aubergine colour.

Finally, add the remaining duck/chicken stock (about 6 cups) and the dark chocolate. Mix well and simmer on a very low heat for an hour. Add the sugar and sea salt. Now strain the mole through a fine mesh sieve. This straining is really important as it gives a rich glossiness to your mole. You may be feeling really weary by now, so go and lie down on a bench somewhere – or leave the mole to rest overnight …

Wash and dry the duck and heat 3 tbsps of oil in a skillet. Brown the duck.

Now, pour the mole back into the deep large pot, heat it until it is simmering. Tuck the duck into the mole, cover partially and cook gently for about 1 hour and 30 minutes.

To serve, place the duck on a plate, pour the tarry, treacle-brown mole over it and scatter with the remaining toasted sesame seeds. Serve with homemade masa harina tortillas and a cup of anejo tequila (to toast yourself, Frida Kahlo, her mercurial cook, those hard-working conquistadors’ servants and the conscientious nuns).

Tortillas
Ingredients
2 cups masa harina
1 ½ to 2 cups of very warm water

Method

Be prepared to mix by hand, so roll those sleeves up. Place the flour in a bowl, pour in the water. Mix in 1 ½ cups of water and let the mixture stand for 5 minutes. Now begin to work the flour and dough together more, adding extra warm water if the dough seems too dry. Test the dough to see if it is ready: take a small bowl of dough and squeeze it between two fingers; if a crack appears, it’s too dry and you should add a little more water: too wet, and add another sprinkle of masa. You can’t over-work masa, so don’t fret!

Separate it out to form about 12 – 16 golf-ball size circular shapes. Allow it to rest for about 15 minutes. Heat up a dry skillet. Either you’ll have already invested in a tortilla press or you’ll need to follow this method to make your tortilla. Place a small plastic bag down on your work surface, flour it and place a ball of dough on top, now place another – floured – plastic bag ontop and roll the tortilla out. Then gently remove the top plastic bag, flip the raw tortilla over into the palm of your hand and peel off the second plastic bag … Cook each tortilla, one at a time, in the unoiled skillet. They only need a few seconds on each side and should blister lightly on each side, then fold as you might a napkin into quarters, place in a serving basket lined with tea towels, and cover with a tea towel to keep the tortillas warm.

Guacamole

Ingredients
1 ripe avocado
olive oil
1 lime
1 ripe tomato, finely chopped
½ red onion, finely chopped
1 red chilli, finely chopped
1 tbsp of fresh green coriander, finely chopped.

Method
In a bowl, using a fork, mash the peeled and de-stoned avocado into a smooth paste. Mix in the tomato, onion, chilli and coriander. Squeeze in the lime juice and add a drizzle of olive oil. Mix thoroughly and serve – if you can’t start eating it immediately, then leave the avocado stone in the guacamole, the stone will stop it from discolouring.

Huitlacoche Fry
Ingredients
½ lb huitlacoche
½ tsp of epazote
2 fresh poblano chilies

1 small onion, minced
1 garlic clove, roughly chopped
1 tbsps of vegetable oil
a pinch of sea salt

Method
Turn the oven on at 220 C and roast the poblano chillies for 30 minutes. After roasting, allow them to cool and then strip off their blackened skins. Open them up, clean out their seeds and then cut them into strips. Chop up the huitlacoche. Now, warm the oil in your trusty skillet and sauté the onion and garlic until they are golden. Add the huitlacoche, epazote, chillies poblano and a pinch of salt. Cook gently for about 15 minutes.
The Huitacoche Fry looks amazingly tarry and wet, like something you might scrape off your wellingtons after an autumn walk, but it tastes scrumptious smeared onto a corn tortilla: mushroomy but with a warm, almost floral, golden taste of corn too …