Posts Tagged ‘Maggie Beer’

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The detail in the devil

November 6, 2009

devilsWell friends, the party season is almost upon us. Oh hell, it’s upon us every week, let’s face it. I just said that as an excuse for talking about one of my favourite nibbles, the devil on horseback.

I had a big fad with these a couple of years ago, and then forgot about them until the amazing Jules served them at her place the other week, and now I’m all agog again at how good they are and have made them several times since.

For those whose parents never served these as snacks at classy ’70s progressive dinners (now there’s a whole other topic for a post …), or who have not otherwise discovered the delights of this little torpedo of salty sweetness, a devil on horseback is basically a prune wrapped in bacon, skewered with a toothpick and then grilled, barbecued or otherwise lightly frazzled.

Put like that, of course, it sounds – well, silly. But believe you me, Kimmy, we are talking seriously good finger food here.

The laziest, most cursory bit of online research reveals little about the ridiculous name, except that it’s a cheaper version of angels on horseback – a fresh oyster wrapped in bacon and then grilled (which I’ve never tried – sounds slippery, but really must give it a go), and this was apparently first documented in Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management in 1888, derived from the French dish anges à cheval. All of this explains nothing about horses and angels. I think the horse is the bacon, and the devil (being black, I suppose??? sheesh) is the prune. Go figure. Told you it was nuts.

Anyhoo – enough with the dodgy historical nomenclature, and on with the recipes.

Jules’ absolutely delicious version, and my copies pictured here, were the updated groovified kind made by your friend and mine Maggie Beer, and the recipe is here. Of course it involves verjuice, and orange zest, and rosemary. These are good, as the verjuice plumps up the prune and gives it a succulence it otherwise can lack, and the orange zest provides some zip in what can be a cloying sort of flavour combo. I did mine with some pancetta I had in the fridge, but Maggie says speck or bacon.

My other fave comes from Margaret Fulton’s Encyclopaedia of Food and Cookery, and is a rather boofier version, direct from the seventies. If you are delicate about salt, stop here, turn around, and take refuge. But if like a true howtoshuckanoysterlover you feel the force strong within you, proceed!

1. First, take one blanched almond.

2. Wrap that little baby in an anchovy, and pop the swaddled nut into the hollow centre of a pitted prune.

3. Wrap in bacon, secure with toothpick and proceed to bung in the oven / stick on the barbecue / in a non-stick frypan, etc.

Repeat procedure for as long as you and your guests can take it. These are so rich and salty you can really only eat about two, although Senor has been known to clear a plate without once gasping for water. Jules and I have discussed possible variations; perhaps a caperberry in place of an anchovy? A teeny smidge of chilli?

Please do have an experimental go – and if you come up with your own variations, tell us all about it.

May the devilish force be with you.

*PS: I know I just said I wouldn’t be here for a bit, but just writing that got me all aquiver about the devils. Now I really am going to be gone for a week …


Posted in dips & snacks, finger food, zing things | Tagged , , | 11 Comments »

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After the party: farewell The Cook and the Chef

September 16, 2009

maggie_simonWell, it’s finally here.

Tonight, very sadly, sees to air the last-ever episode of  The Cook and the Chef, the only television cooking show I have watched avidly since it began four years ago. I love the dagginess of it, the focus on the food and the recipes and the growers and food producers, rather than the celebrity of the presenters or the flash panache of the camera angles.

I love the aunty-nephew banter between Maggie and Simon, their contrasting tastes and techniques and styles with food. I love the greedy earthiness of their dive-in-and-taste-it methodology at the end of each show, and the honest love of food evident in their gasps and groans while they cup their hands beneath their chins for drips and crumbs. (I have even grown fond of Maggie’s idiosyncratic terror of chilli!) I love the general air of generosity, egalitarianism and passion that has infused this program since the start.

The sense of bounteousness isn’t just about the food itself, either. Both of them speak magnanimously of other chefs, cooks, providores and producers, but Maggie Beer in particular is renowned for her generosity in promoting people and places she thinks have something to offer.

I know of a particular story demonstrating this, when Maggie went to Shanghai to cook at M on the Bund, where our beloved bro-in-law Hamish (who is sadly mostly excluded from joining us here in howtoshuckland these days by China’s Great Firewall!) is executive chef. I am told that when she got up to speak after the Maggie Beer M On the Bund luncheon, almost the entirety of her address was taken up with singing the praises of Hamish and his staff rather than discussing her own role in the luch – and she has kept up the praise ever since.

And then I had my own brush with this munificence, when Maggie wrote to Hamish and Kate telling them how much she liked my book The Submerged Cathedral, which they’d given her to read on the plane home. You can imagine my breathless excitement at that news when they passed it on, knowing I was such a fan of her books and the show. Then the next day, I suddenly began getting texts from friends saying Maggie Beer was on ABC radio recommending my book. Asked in an interview about what she did in her spare time, she apparently began rhapsodising about reading, and mine happened to be her favourite book of the moment. So it’s very clear to me that Ms B is the type of person who will not let a chance go by to give a push to other creators she thinks might do with a helping hand.

I reckon there are two types of creative people – the ones who are fearful of losing the edge, protecting their patch, hoarding ideas, always competing and anxiously looking around at who might be getting ahead of them. And then there’s the other kind, who see their creativity as an ever-filling well, who know that no matter how much they give away, there will be more than enough to go around, and who genuinely get a kick out of sharing their knowledge, skills, and success.

And that is the spirit that has so enlivened The Cook and The Chef for all these years.

So tonight I will be sitting back with a glass of wine, watching and toasting Maggie & Simon for all the fun they’ve brought into our house. Hurrah for them.

Posted in food as love, generosity, people & cooking | Tagged , , | 8 Comments »

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My dark secrets

July 6, 2009

Organic ChocolateSenor & I are backing off on the booze this month, albeit without going the whole Dry July hog as we did last year (now that was a looong month – can’t believe I even attended the Byron Bay Writers’ Festival and stayed off the vino. I see they’re being more humane this year, and putting it back to August where it belongs…).

We’re thinking of this month as Quite Damp July instead, cutting out the booze except for weekends (and yes, I do include Friday and Sunday!).

While I still find this midweek abstinence exceedingly dull, especially if socialising with friends over dinner, it’s a hell of a lot easier now I have figured out that my traditional bodily six-o’clock wine time alarm bell may actually be, apart from the signal for the welcome end-of-working-day reward, a craving for sugar as much as for the booze itself.

I discovered this because, in compensation for lack of wine, I have begun dosing self with a couple of pieces of dark chocolate and a cup of peppermint tea at 5.30pm. Presto. No ‘GodDAMN I want a drink!’ cravings, which I used to think were entirely psychological. So unless I have created a successful self-medicating placebo effect (can you placebo-fool yourself?), I think the ol’  bod actually craves sugar at the end of the day, and because I’ve never been a dessert person or had a particularly sweet tooth (or so I thought), the only real sugar hit I get is the vino. Interesting.

So – on to the topic and my new drug of choice: chocolate. Dark chocolate, to be specific. Not too sweet, but sweet enough to get a girl through the evening. At the moment I’m swinging between Green & Black’s Organic Dark 70% Chocolate, which is nice and bitter, and not too sweet at all;  and Lindt’s Excellence dark chocolate with chilli – a little sweeter than the G&B’s, and with that nice added mouth-warmth from the chilli.

I know there are serious chocolate connoisseurs out there, but suspect I’ll never become one of them – too much of a salt fiend to get seriously into the choccies. However, I did come across this nice piece  in the New Yorker, in which a chocolatier called Rick Mast, “New York City’s only bean-to-bar chocolate maker”, pairs different literary masterpieces with the appropriate chocolate, from Leaves of Grass to Pride and Prejudice to Walden. And here I found mention of something I might seriously like: a chocolate called 81% with fleur de sel – can such a perfect combo really exist?! I’m not sure if this is a joke or no, but here’s Mr Mast on Shakespeare and my fantasy chocolate:

Othello, “Othello,” by William Shakespeare
81% with Fleur de Sel
This proud, lovesick Moor should be paired with eighty-one per cent dark chocolate, seasoned with chocolate’s version of the Venetian Sea, fleur de sel. The sea salt gives context to the sugar, intensifying not only the floral and cinnamon notes but also the sweetness. The complexity of the delicately salted chocolate may even surpass Othello’s jealousy, but at least your mouth will have a happy ending. Avoid your own jealous rampage by not sharing.

Hmm. Investigation needed, methinks.

Oh and if you are looking for a chocolate cake recipe, as it’s the only kind of cake I seem to make (apart from my new love, the whole l’orange variety…), I can vouch for the following two chocolate triumphs. These  both involve little more than melting some of the good stuff and bunging in ovens, but as usual I end up cooking these for much longer than the recipes say.

The first is the chocolate fudge cake in Yotam Ottolenghi’s fabulous eponymous cookbook (he of the excellent New Vegetarian column in the Guardian) – I highly recommend this book, as it’s full of surprising, flavoursome dishes that are incredibly simple to make but have beautiful complexity of flavour, and heaps of it is vego. Not to mention that the book is a beautiful shiny luscious thing in itself.

The second is Maggie Beer’s absolutely divine chocolate cake with whisky-soaked raisins and orange zest. Oh, my. I think this recipe title speaks for itself, don’t you? It’s from her book Maggie’s Kitchen, about which I have raved before.

OK. I’m feeling quite faint with all this cacao-bean chaos on the loose, so I must go and have another cup of tea and a good lie down. But while I’m resting, do tell me  all your dark chocolatey secrets? Favourites to buy or make? July is a long month, after all …


Posted in dessert, recipes | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments »

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Zest for life

June 2, 2009

lemon zestFurther to our earlier discussion of simple but essential kitchen gadgets, I hereby withdraw my remarks to Hughesy about the humble zester being interchangeable with a grater.

For I now am in love with a six-dollar zester – it takes up no space, and is perfectly designed to take exactly the right depth of citrus peel for flavour and texture.

I realise now that a grater either takes too much or (in the case of our super-fine Microplane), too little, with the latter result being a sort of vaguely citrusy fairy floss instead of the sharp, fresh zing required. And digging too deeply, of course, means icky bitter pith. 

And as for lemons, oranges and limes, and why these zesty friends must be included in  life’s truly essential ingredients – well, you all know. ‘Sundry items too numerous to mention’, as the old clearance sale adverts in the Cooma-Monaro Express used to say. We’re talking sharpening up and /or sweetening everything from lamb shanks to roast chook to fruit salad to curries to chocolate cake.

Maggie Beer puts citrus peel in everything – from this incredibly delicious Moroccan poached ocean trout (have cooked several times, it’s from my treasured copy of  Maggie’s Table that chefbro Hamish gave me for Christmas – personally signed and everything, following their cooking gig together in Shangers) to the completely different but equally luscious  Haloumi & Citrus Lentils (ditto).

Skye Gyngell is another lemon freak, and her wonderful book A Year in My Kitchen is one of my favourites.  Here’s what she says about lemon zest:

The zesting of a lemon could never be described as a recipe, but this is an ingredient I use so often that it warrants a mention …  

Lemon zest works beautifully when tossed into a simple salad whose leaves include basil, mint, chervil and rocket. The addition of grated Parmesan, lemon juice and good olive oil is all that is needed, in my mind, to creat a perfect green salad. 

The tangy zest also cleans up the flavour of many desserts that would otherwise seem a fraction too sweet. Similarly, it works well to counteract the potentially cloying flavour of pickled fruits. In essence, lemon zest is a simple, quick way to add freshness to your cooking. There is no real secret, just be sure that to use the finest holes on your grater and only use the yellow part of the skin. The white pith tends to taste very bitter. Grate your zest as close as possible to the time that you are going to use it, as it will dry out fairly quickly if left out uncovered, or indeed even covered in the fridge overnight. 

Posted in equipment, fruit, recipes, vegetable, zing things | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments »