How to Eat Read Online Free Page A
Author: Nigella Lawson
sauces and is given, gratis. Included in it will be one stick of celery. And I wish we could buy the same in our markets, let alone get it for free. You need so little of it when cooking—still, I’m gratified to know that a reliable product is in the market year-round.
In summer or even from spring onward, if you’ve got a garden or bit of yard, you can grow some lovage, the leaves and stalks of which fabulously impart the scent of a grassy, slightly more aromatic celery. You just pick a bit as you need it. I often use lovage as a replacement for celery; if I’m chopping some onion, carrot, and garlic to make a base for a shepherd’s pie or a thick soup, I chop in some lovage leaves at the same time.
LETTUCE AND LOVAGE SOUP
Naturally, you can use more if you want the lovage to be the subject, the actual focus. To make a lettuce and lovage soup, soften a handful of finely chopped lovage leaves along with 4 finely chopped scallions in about 2 tablespoons of butter, then add 2 shredded heads of romaine and let them wilt in the buttery heat. Stir in ½ teaspoon sugar and some salt, if the stock you’re using is not very salty itself. Add about 4 cups of stock—a light chicken stock, possibly from your freezer, or vegetable stock, homemade or prepared from best-quality cubes—or half stock and the rest milk. Gently simmer, uncovered, for about 10 to 15 minutes, then either blend in a blender or food processor or push through a strainer or a food mill. Taste again for seasoning. Add a good grating of fresh nutmeg. If you want a velvety cream rather than a light, pale broth, stir an egg yolk beaten with ½ cup cream, heavy or light, into the soup over the heat, but make sure it doesn’t boil. Remove from the heat and serve, sprinkling over some more chopped lovage leaves.
You can grow lovage from seed, but I bought a little pot from a garden center some years back and planted it; now each spring it grows back huge, its bushy, long-stalked arms outstretched, magnificently architectural.
You should grow your own herbs if you can and want to, but don’t spread yourself, or your plants, too thin. It is counterproductive if you have so little of each herb that you never pick much of it for fear of totally denuding your stock. In my own garden, I stick to rosemary, flat-leaf parsley, arugula, and sorrel. I like to grow lots of parsley—at least two rows, the length of the whole bed—and even more arugula. Some years I’ve planted garlic so that I can use the gloriously infused leaves, as they grow, cut up freshly in a salad. In pots I keep bay, marjoram, and mint. This year I’m going to try some angelica—to flavor custards—and Thai basil, so that I don’t have to go to the Thai shop to buy huge bunches of the stuff, wonderfully aromatic though it is, only to see it go bad before I’ve had a chance to use it all. I have never had any success with coriander (from seed). I can manage basil easily, but then I suddenly feel overrun. And I have to say, I find watering pots excruciatingly effortful.
As with so much to do with food, a lot of a little rather than a little of a lot is the best, most comforting, and most useful rule. You can always buy herbs growing in pots, in season, at good supermarkets and garden centers, and herbs cut in big bunches in specialist shops and at good greengrocers.
MAYONNAISE
Stock is what you may make out of the bones of your roasted chicken, but mayonnaise, real mayonnaise, is what you might make to eat with the cold, leftover meat. There is one drawback: when you actually make mayonnaise you realize, beyond the point of insistent denial, how much oil goes into it. But because even the best bottled mayonnaise—and I don’t mean the one you think I mean, Hellman’s, but one manufactured by a company called Cottage Delight (see page 461 )—bears little or no relation to real mayonnaise, you may as well know how to make it.
When I was in my teens, I loved Henry James. I read him
In summer or even from spring onward, if you’ve got a garden or bit of yard, you can grow some lovage, the leaves and stalks of which fabulously impart the scent of a grassy, slightly more aromatic celery. You just pick a bit as you need it. I often use lovage as a replacement for celery; if I’m chopping some onion, carrot, and garlic to make a base for a shepherd’s pie or a thick soup, I chop in some lovage leaves at the same time.
LETTUCE AND LOVAGE SOUP
Naturally, you can use more if you want the lovage to be the subject, the actual focus. To make a lettuce and lovage soup, soften a handful of finely chopped lovage leaves along with 4 finely chopped scallions in about 2 tablespoons of butter, then add 2 shredded heads of romaine and let them wilt in the buttery heat. Stir in ½ teaspoon sugar and some salt, if the stock you’re using is not very salty itself. Add about 4 cups of stock—a light chicken stock, possibly from your freezer, or vegetable stock, homemade or prepared from best-quality cubes—or half stock and the rest milk. Gently simmer, uncovered, for about 10 to 15 minutes, then either blend in a blender or food processor or push through a strainer or a food mill. Taste again for seasoning. Add a good grating of fresh nutmeg. If you want a velvety cream rather than a light, pale broth, stir an egg yolk beaten with ½ cup cream, heavy or light, into the soup over the heat, but make sure it doesn’t boil. Remove from the heat and serve, sprinkling over some more chopped lovage leaves.
You can grow lovage from seed, but I bought a little pot from a garden center some years back and planted it; now each spring it grows back huge, its bushy, long-stalked arms outstretched, magnificently architectural.
You should grow your own herbs if you can and want to, but don’t spread yourself, or your plants, too thin. It is counterproductive if you have so little of each herb that you never pick much of it for fear of totally denuding your stock. In my own garden, I stick to rosemary, flat-leaf parsley, arugula, and sorrel. I like to grow lots of parsley—at least two rows, the length of the whole bed—and even more arugula. Some years I’ve planted garlic so that I can use the gloriously infused leaves, as they grow, cut up freshly in a salad. In pots I keep bay, marjoram, and mint. This year I’m going to try some angelica—to flavor custards—and Thai basil, so that I don’t have to go to the Thai shop to buy huge bunches of the stuff, wonderfully aromatic though it is, only to see it go bad before I’ve had a chance to use it all. I have never had any success with coriander (from seed). I can manage basil easily, but then I suddenly feel overrun. And I have to say, I find watering pots excruciatingly effortful.
As with so much to do with food, a lot of a little rather than a little of a lot is the best, most comforting, and most useful rule. You can always buy herbs growing in pots, in season, at good supermarkets and garden centers, and herbs cut in big bunches in specialist shops and at good greengrocers.
MAYONNAISE
Stock is what you may make out of the bones of your roasted chicken, but mayonnaise, real mayonnaise, is what you might make to eat with the cold, leftover meat. There is one drawback: when you actually make mayonnaise you realize, beyond the point of insistent denial, how much oil goes into it. But because even the best bottled mayonnaise—and I don’t mean the one you think I mean, Hellman’s, but one manufactured by a company called Cottage Delight (see page 461 )—bears little or no relation to real mayonnaise, you may as well know how to make it.
When I was in my teens, I loved Henry James. I read him
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