Shouldn't You Just...?

SHOULDN’T YOU JUST...?

Advice on modern etiquette for the not-so-new millennium.

• Outfit your dining table with a bunch of yellow candles to celebrate spring, even after Easter has come and gone?

• Enliven your summertime drinks with these rosy cocktail picks?

                                            

• Keep a jar of cocktail onions on hand when you find yourself needing the occasional onion? They last for such a long time in the fridge and impart a nice flavor to recipes in a pinch!

                                          

• Burn sprigs of dried thyme and rosemary to add a delicious fragrance to your home? Or as a smoky garnish to your steak, the way French restaurants often do? Not only is thyme believed to bring about strength and clarity, rosemary is thought to be helpful in removing negative energy from the air.

BOOK/A TABLE - Vinegar Chicken

While reading P.G. Wodehouse’s devastatingly witty Love Among the Chickens, I was reminded to pull out one of my favorite cookbooks, Simon Hopkinson’s Roast Chicken and Other Stories, and once again try my hand at the Vinegar Chicken a.k.a. Poulet Sauté au Vinaigre therein.

A friend made Vinegar Chicken for me a few years ago and I’ve never been able to make the dish quite as good as hers...but sometimes, that’s just the way it is. Nevertheless, Vinegar Chicken is still pretty tasty and wonderfully fragrant. 

I’m sure you will at least have better luck making this chicken than Jeremy Garnet (the hero in Love Among the Chickens) had in raising scads of them, after being suckered into the scheme by his dear friend Stanley Featherstone Ukridge, a most unreliable flibbertigibbet and one of Wodehouse’s popular protagonists. 

At this point in the story, things aren’t going so well for Jeremy...

“Personally, I feel as if I should never move again. You have no conception of the difficulty of rounding up fowls and getting them safely to bed. Having no proper place to put them, we were obliged to stow some of them in the cube sugar-boxes and the rest in the basement. It has only just occurred to me that they ought to have had perches to roost on.”

Don’t worry if you don’t have any cube sugar-boxes, a perch, or a basement in which to place your chicken—if it has been properly dispatched, a flame proof casserole will do just fine!

Poulet Sauté au Vinaigre

From Roast Chicken and Other Stories by Simon Hopkinson with Lindsey Bareham

Ingredients 
4 LB chicken, jointed into 8 pieces
Salt and pepper
4 oz butter
2 TB olive oil
6 very ripe tomatoes, skinned, deseeded and chopped
Half pint best-quality red wine vinegar
Half pint chicken stock
Two heaped TBS chopped parsley (or tarragon!)

Method 
Season the joints of chicken with salt and pepper. Heat 2 ounces of the butter and the olive oil in a flame proof casserole until just turning nut-brown. 

Add the chicken and fry gently, turning occasionally, until golden brown all over. 

Add the chopped tomatoes, and carry on frying and stewing until the tomato has lost its moisture and is dark red and sticky. 

Pour in the vinegar and reduce by simmering until almost disappeared. 

Add the stock, and simmer again until reduced by half. 

Remove the chicken to a serving dish and keep warm. 

Whisk the remaining butter into the sauce to give it a glossy finish. (My suggestion, add a teaspoon of vinegar at the end!)

Add 1 TB chopped parsley, pour over the chicken and the sprinkle with the remaining parsley. 

Serve with plain boiled potatoes.

BOOK/A TABLE - The Manderley Cocktail

I just caught up with a great documentary—Becoming Hitchcock: The Legacy of Blackmail—which explores Alfred Hitchcock’s early style and defining techniques developed during his transition to talkies. The doc also ventures into The Master’s use of food, such as the sandwiches in Psycho, the ominously illumined, potentially fatal glass of milk in Suspicion and the dinner menus batted about in Rebecca. The novel Rebecca by Daphne duMaurier is among my all-time favorites and once again I have my high school teacher to thank for introducing it to us in our list of required reading, along with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

Rebecca is a mystery foremost, but it’s also a tale of romantic suspense surrounding loss—and what is perceived of as love. The memory of Rebecca, the former mistress at Manderley, haunts the newly married bride who is ill-equipped to take her place as head of the great house. It doesn’t help things that there is an evil housekeeper lurking about (in the form of Mrs. Danvers), still obsessed with Rebecca.

Below is an elegant cocktail based on the novel. In composing his drink, the creator has taken references to the rose garden at Manderley and the civilized sherry served to its guests. There’s also a dash of Campari involved, in a sly nod to Mrs. Danvers’s bitter attitude.

Manderley Cocktail
Serves one

First make rosewater syrup; heat 250 ml (about 8 1/2 ounces) of rosewater to the boiling point in a saucepan. Take it of the heat and stir in 400 ml (13 1/2 ounces) of caster sugar stirring until all the sugar has dissolved. Let cool somewhat and then pour into a clean bottle. Will last 2-3 weeks in the fridge.

Ingredients:
4 cl (about 1 1/2 ounces) cognac
2 cl (about 1 ounce) dry sherry
1,5 cl (about 1/2 ounce) rosewater syrup
1 dash of Campari
Lemonade

Method:
Stir the ingredients in a stirring glass full of ice until well chilled. Pour into a chilled cocktail glass and top with a dash of lemonade.

Do enjoy!

 

BOOK/A TABLE - Blackberry Raspberry Cobbler

I’ve always felt exhilarated after finishing a particularly long book, or one that’s taken me a long time to get around to reading. While Stendhal’s The Red and the Black isn’t exactly short, it definitely falls into that latter category—I’d been meaning to read the book for about 40 years, ever since I heard it referenced in a Stephen Sondheim lyric from A Little Night Music, back when I was in high school and cultivating my love of the muscial theater! I’d never heard of The Red and the Black before that and for some reason it stuck, like a raspberry seed in my teeth.

Certainly, I’m glad to have finally checked Stendhal’s epic off my reading list and yes, I did enjoy it. Throughout the novel, the intriguing hero Julien Sorel is in a constant personal battle between a career in the military (symbolized by red) and the church (black) while juggling a few mesdames and mademoiselles thrown into the mix for an unexpected ending.   

This recipe for a cobbler with red raspberries and blackberries struck me as the perfect homage to the book I’d finally finished—as well as a fantastic finish for any adventurous meal. 

Do enjoy!

Blackberry Raspberry Cobbler
By Lori Lange
Servings: 8 servings

Ingredients
FILLING:
½ cup (1 stick) salted butter, melted
2 tablespoons granulated white sugar
1 medium lemon, zested
3 cups blackberries
1 cup raspberries

BATTER:
1 cup self rising flour
¾ cup granulated white sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
¾ cup milk

Instructions
Preheat the oven to 400°F.

MAKE THE FILLING:
To a 9x13 baking dish, add the melted butter.
In a medium bowl, combine the sugar and lemon zest and rub together. Add the blackberries and raspberries, and toss to coat. Spoon them evenly on top of the butter in the baking dish.

MAKE THE BATTER:
In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Stir in the milk (the batter will be thick).
Spoon the batter on top of the berries. There might be spots it doesn’t cover, and that’s okay.
Bake until the fruit in the cobbler is bubbling up at the edges and a toothpick inserted into the cobbler batter on top comes out clean (about 20 minutes).

 
The cobbler will be too hot to eat when it comes out of the oven, so let it cool for about 30 minutes. Serve topped with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.

 

BOOK/A TABLE - Jellybeans for Breakfast

 

I like jellybeans well enough, but they’re not my go-to sugar fix. I’ll get a bag of Brach’s at Easter, but it’s more out of a sense of duty than a preference (like candy corn at Hallowe’en). It’s the Cadbury creme and mini eggs that are musts for me this time of year when I raid my neighborhood CVS for Easter candy.

However, I love Jellybeans for Breakfast by Miriam Young, first published in 1968. I have the copy I adored as a kid, and from the scribbled-on pages, it appears I was still learning my letters. I also, at some point, tore the cover off.

The story is about two wildly imaginative girls and the fun they dream up during a sleepover. They ride their bikes to the moon, run a flea circus, dress up and drink tea out of acorn cups at a woodland picnic. They even meet the President (who gives them medals and jellybeans—years before it became fashionable in the Regan era!). Naturally, they share bags of jellybeans and after a candlelit dinner with strawberry jam as a soup course, they have them for dessert.

When the friends finally return from all their adventures, both sets of parents welcome them back saying, “But won’t you please stay home? We’re having jellybeans for breakfast.”

In tribute to this charming little book, I still put jellybeans out on my Easter table if I’m hosting the celebration. But more often, I’ll sneak away by myself, reach into a bag of these multi-colored jewels and scarf down an illicit handful on Easter morning.

Won’t you join me in having some jellybeans for breakfast?

BOOK/A TABLE - Silky Carrot Soup with Orange

 

Barbara’s back! Barbara Pym, that is. Having just made the beef bourguinon from The Barbara Pym Cookbook, I happened upon her recipe for Carrot Soup with Orange. Carrots remind me of rabbits, which make me think of Easter and naturally too, of springtime. So I thought this extraordinally flavored, silky, and simply made carrot soup would be perfect for the spring season and Easter’s imminent arrival!

I used rainbow carrots and the purple variety made the soup a little darker, but ordinary carrots will shine even more vibrantly on your table. 

“I thought perhaps a cold meal, but I’ve made one of my soups,” Leonora was saying, “just for your first evening back.”  —The Sweet Dove Died by Barbara Pym

Carrot Soup with Orange
Ingredients:
1 lb carrots, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
4 tablespoons oil or melted butter
4 cups chicken or vegetable stock
Salt and pepper to taste
Juice of 2 oranges
Grated rind of 1 orange
1 teaspoon brown sugar

Method:
Cook the carrots, onion, and garlic in oil or butter until softened, about 10 minutes. Add the stock, season, and simmer until tender. Puree in a blender or put through a sieve. Add the orange juice and grated rind, and return to stove. Reheat, add sugar, taste, and adjust seasoning. Serve quite hot.

BOOK/A TABLE - Barbara's Bourguignon

 

I previously posted a recipe for a classic—and heavy—beef bourguinon here. The French stew is certainly a sumptuous treat, ideal for winter hibernation. But as we tip-toe toward spring, I’d like to offer a lighter version of a warming bourguinon, perfect for those chilly days that pop up occasionally.

This bourguinon is courtesy of The Barbara Pym Cookbook and unique in that the beef is marinated overnight. It’s simple to prepare and just listen to the young clergyman Basil Branche in Pym’s An Unsuitable Attachment wax romantic as he speaks of the dish:

“Imparadised in one another’s arms,” as Milton put it, Basil went on. “Or encasseroled, perhaps—the bay leaf resting on the boeuf bourguignon.”

I hope you enjoy Barbara’s beef bourguinon—or more properly, Boeuf à la Bourguignonne, beef in the style of Burgundy!

P.S. The Burgundy wine I planned to use was wildly expensive, so I went with a more reasonable Côtes du Rhône that did the trick for less than twenty bucks. 

Boeuf Bourguinon

Ingredients:

1 lb braising or stewing beef, cut and cubes
1 onion, sliced
1 carrot, diced
1 bay leaf
Thyme and whole peppercorns to taste
2 tablespoons oil
2 glasses red wine
Flour
Butter or margarine
½ pound button mushrooms
4 oz bacon, diced
12 small onions, peeled

Method:
Marinate meat, onion slices, carrot, and herbs for 24 hours in oil and wine. Strain marinade and reserve it, discarding solids. Pat meat dry, roll cubes in flour, and sauté in butter or margarine until browned. Place meat in a stewpan. Sauté mushrooms, bacon, and whole onions in butter, then add to beef. Pour reserved marinade all over, cover, and simmer 1 1/2 to 2 hours.