Cooking

Nigella, Jamie, Gordon, and to some degree, Delia — these British celebrity chefs and cooks all have books that dominate shelf-space in American bookstores. Their recipes look no different from those you’d find in one of Ina’s or Martha’s cookbooks. You measure out ingredients in cups, add a tablespoon of this or that, and bake your creation at 350 degrees Fahrenheit and voila! A sticky toffee pudding fit for the Queen herself.

But say you can’t wait for Nigella’s new cookbook to show up in Des Moines, so you go order it from amazon.co.uk. You might be confused the first time you start cooking from it. There are lists of strange ingredients like aubergines, cornflour, courgettes, and what the heck is sheet gelatin? And nothing’s measured in cups! You’ll need to drag out your postal scale to measure out five ounces of “strong flour,” whatever that is. Why can’t they just tell you what it is in cups? Then it comes time to bake … if you’re lucky and were good in math in school, you can figure out what 200 degrees Celsius is in Fahrenheit, but sometimes these cookbooks will tell you to bake a cake at Gas Mark 4. Or worse, in a “moderate oven.”

A British cookbook can be slightly puzzling to an American, so here’s a primer for you. I own about 50 cookbooks from the UK and Ireland alone, and I have to say, I prefer them to American cookbooks … and not because I’m an incorrigible Anglophile. I always try to buy the original printing of a British cookbook, not the version that’s been translated for American cooks. Here’s why.

British cooks (all Europeans as well) are not as dependent on measuring utensils as Americans are. Measuring dry ingredients like flour and sugar by volume can lead to disaster, especially when you’re baking, because volume measurements aren’t as accurate as weight. Instead, Brits weigh out most everything because everyone’s got a scale tucked away in the kitchen. Indeed, they’re confused when they pick up an American cookbook and see all this “half-cup” and “two cups” business. If you buy an inexpensive digital scale that gives you weights in grams as well as ounces (most Brit cookery books give weights in grams), you’ll be 75 percent of the way to cooking nirvana — and I suspect your recipe success rate will improve dramatically. You’ll actually save time cooking with a scale because you weigh one ingredient, tare the scale, weigh the next ingredient into the same bowl, and so on. Here’s the scale I reach for most often in my kitchen, a MyWeigh 3001P.

British teaspoons and tablespoons are also different from American ones and are slightly bigger. Here’s a chart to make the conversion:

1 Brit teaspoon = 1 American teaspoon (too close to matter)
1 Brit tablespoon = 1 American tablespoon (too close to matter)
2 Brit tablespoons = 3 American tablespoons
3.5 Brit tablespoons = 4 American tablespoons (or 1/4 cup volume measure)
4 Brit tablespoons = 5 American tablespoons

There’s also some difference between British and American liquid measures, especially within older British cookbooks like Jane Grigson’s or Elizabeth David’s. You might have a recipe that tells you to add a “pint of water” to a soup, but a British Imperial pint is 20 fl. ounces while an American pint is 16 fl. oz. so adjust accordingly.

Brit recipes will include ingredients like aubergines, courgettes, swedes, and marrow. Rather than provide a long list of translations (they’re eggplant, zucchini, turnip/rutabaga, and extra-large zucchini, by the way), here’s a link with some of the most common ingredients you’ll come across. Others you can figure out with a Google search. That “strong flour”? It means bread flour, which has a higher protein content than all purpose flour (called “plain flour” in the UK). Still others are easy enough to figure out by context. For example, bicarbonate of soda = baking soda, a “knob” of butter = a pat of butter, and gelatine = gelatin.

Now this gas mark business. Many European gas stoves have a knob with numbers instead of degree markings. You want to bake a cake? You turn the knob to gas mark 4, which is about 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Older British cookbooks might not even give you a degree setting or a gas mark number, but simply tell you to bake the pudding in a “slow oven.”

Here’s a handy chart so you’ll never be puzzled about oven settings again:

225° F = 100° C or Gas Mark ¼ (Very cool)
250° F = 130° C or Gas Mark ½ (Very cool)
275° F = 140° C or Gas Mark 1 (Cool or slow)
300° F = 150° C or Gas Mark 2 (Cool or slow)
325° F = 170° C or Gas Mark 3 (Warm)
350° F = 180° C or Gas Mark 4 (Moderate)
375° F = 190° C or Gas Mark 5 (Medium hot)
400° F = 200° C or Gas Mark 6 (Fairly hot)
425° F = 220° C or Gas Mark 7 (Hot)
450° F = 230° C or Gas Mark 8 (Very hot)
475° F = 240° C or Gas Mark 9 (Very hot)

Thanks to a great exchange rate right now, you can get some awesome deals on British cookbooks you can’t buy stateside.* Nigella Christmas: Food, Family, Friends, Festivities, for example, won’t be available in Ameri-speak until November 2009, but you can have the British version for £12.50 ($18.92) from amazon.co.uk right now (plus shipping, which I find is quick and reasonably priced). Or Jamie’s Ministry of Food, which doesn’t seem to have an American publishing date, for a mere £9.75 ($14.75).

* A few dealers do import a selection of current British cookery books. Try Kitchen Arts & Letters in New York City and Rabelais Books in Portland, Maine, both shops where I’ve personally purchased British imports — they ship, too. If you stop by Kitchen Arts & Letters, purchase a copy of All You Need to Know About the British Kitchen: Names, Terms, & Measures for the American Cook by Jane Garmey. They published this slim, helpful pamphlet; I keep my dogearred copy tucked next to my English cookery books.

The suet is ready in the fridge. All the dried fruits and candied orange have been procured. A new bottle of brandy was purchased this morning for the event. Now it’s time to make the mincemeat.

Here’s my final ingredient list. I don’t cook with measuring cups (except for the brown sugar), instead relying on a more accurate digital scale, so if you want to do this at home, either buy a scale or eyeball everything. Mincemeat is forgiving, so go for it.

Everything except the suet, almond extract and brandy

8-oz. golden raisins
4-oz. currants
1.5-oz. black raisins (one of those small boxes you stick in lunchboxes)
2-oz. candied orange peel (I buy mine from King Arthur Flour)
2-oz. blanched almonds, chopped finely
1 cup light brown sugar, lightly packed
3-oz. suet
Zest and juice from 3 clementine oranges
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp. allspice
1/2 tsp. cloves
1/2 tsp. almond extract
3 tbsp. brandy

Dump everything, except the almond extract and brandy, into a heavy 3-qt. or larger saucepan and heat over medium heat, stirring frequently. Eventually the brown sugar will melt into the suet, leaving the fruits all glossy and extremely fragrant.

Once everything’s all melty and fragrant (about 7 minutes), turn off the heat and stir in the almond extract and brandy. Give the mincemeat a final stir, then pack it into glass jars before storing it in the fridge. I like to let my mincemeat sit for a couple weeks before using it; it gets even tastier. But if you can’t wait, feel free to use it immediately. It’s delicious over ice cream, stirred into yogurt, and of course, baked in a pie. The yield here is enough mincemeat for a 9″ pie.

Now, the big question. How does my mincemeat compare to the orange almond mincemeat I had at Neal’s  Yard Dairy? It stacked up pretty well, thank you. The mincemeat I had in London didn’t have any dark raisins or currants that I remember (they may have stuck only with golden raisins and maybe apple), but my mincemeat has a distinct orange flavor, thanks to the excellent quality of candied peel I used and clementine zest, and the almond flavor was very subtle and nice. Oh, and my kitchen smelled heavenly while this was cooking on the stovetop.

Next week, I’ll bake this into mincemeat tartlets for Christmas Day dessert. Stay tuned.

When I was in London a few weeks ago, I fell madly, rapturously in love with an orange and almond mincemeat being sampled at Neal’s Yard Dairy in the Borough Market. I had planned to run back there after lunch, but after hours wandering the market and my brain dulled by a heavy meal, I completely forgot my errand. No worries: I’m a professional recipe developer, so I thought it would be fun to recreate this most delicious food memory.

When I was a kid, I have to admit I was seriously revolted by mincemeat. My great aunt always made a mincemeat pie for Christmas dinner, and it looked and smelled disgusting. Plus, the word mincemeat itself turned my stomach as I imagined chewy, gristly bits of meat chunked up with squishy raisins and doused with booze, all baked up in a pie crust. Back in the old days (like in the 1500s, smartasses, not the 1970s) cooks did include bits of meat in mincemeat because liquor, vinegar, and fermenting fruits helped preserve it — the technique was a great way to stretch the food dollar/pound, so to speak. These days, the only thing meaty in mincemeat is suet, which is the fat from around the cow’s kidneys. In the UK, you can purchase vegetarian suet; here in the U.S. I’ve never found it, and I’m not sure I want to because I’m positive it’s filled with all sorts of nasty, unpronounceable chemicals.

So if you want to make mincemeat here in the colonies, you’ll need to have some suet at the ready.

You can find suet in the meat aisle of most grocery stores. Grocers usually keep it near the chicken livers and ham hocks; it is also a seasonal ingredient, meaning it’s easier to find in the winter months. Not only do cooks use suet for mincemeat, animal lovers use suet to make bird food cakes for songbirds. Normally I buy organic suet from my butcher, but he didn’t have any — so it was off to Stop & Shop:

(Vegetarians/Vegans may want to stop reading.) What recipes don’t tell you is suet has to be prepared before you use it. You can’t just chop it up and throw it into your dish. Once you get the plastic off, you’ll see that not only is suet fatty, but it contains blood, connective tissue, and other nasty little bits that I certainly don’t want to eat. Do you? No, I didn’t think so. What you have to do now is render the fat so these unpleasant bits can be removed. Here’s how I do it.

First I chop the suet up a bit so that it can fit through the shredder attachment on my KitchenAid stand mixer. You want to get the fat shredded as finely as possible so it melts quickly, and a shredder makes short work of this. (Tip: freeze your small pieces of suet for a few minutes so that they don’t gob up your attachments.)

Here’s the suet going through the shredder:

I had a little over 2 lbs of suet here and once shredded, it filled up a 5-qt. mixing bowl. I set a 7-qt. enamel cast iron pot over low heat, added 1/4 cup water to the bottom, then added the shredded fat:

I let this cook/render down for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. When you’re working with fat and fire, it’s never a good idea to leave the kitchen, so keep a close eye on it. Don’t be tempted to turn up the heat to make the fat melt faster — low and slow is the way to go. Eventually, the solid fat will render down completely and you’ll be left with clear liquid fat with bits of brown stuff in it. That brown stuff is the blood, connective tissue, and other grizzlies you don’t want to eat. Now it’s time to sieve it out. I line my conical fine-mesh sieve with cheesecloth and set it over a clean soup pot:

Then I ladle the fat into the sieve. Be careful — that fat is hot!

Et voila, lovely pure suet. Um, not quite. You’ll see that this clear liquid is starting to firm up. What I do is let it cool down a bit, then melt it over a low flame and re-sieve with clean cheesecloth to make sure every impurity is removed.

The purified suet gets poured into a container once cooled, labeled, then stored in the fridge. It looks like this when it’s done:

It has no smell at all, at least none I can discern with my sensitive schnozz. It also becomes quite hard when refrigerated, but when it’s added to mincemeat, it’ll melt into the base, giving it a rich flavor and mouthfeel – no meaty flavor at all. If you want to make mincemeat at home, don’t be tempted to try Crisco — it’ll just turn your recipe into a greasy mess.

OK, next up — orange and almond mincemeat. At least my fair approximation of what I tasted at Neal’s Yard Dairy last week.

We’re hearing a lot about Jamie Oliver’s Ministry of Food (not yet available in the U.S.), but did you know that one of England’s most beloved of food writers worked in the actual Ministry during WWII? Her name is Marguerite Patten and she’s something of a national treasure in England. I own several of her cookbooks (she’s written 170!), including a particular favorite, The Basic Basics Jams, Preserves and Chutneys. I want to know how to roast a joint of beef, turn out the best Yorkshire puddings, or simply make a classic English meal, Patten’s who I turn to.

I wasn’t sure if Patten was still alive, but an interview with her appeared in today’s Telegraph. She’s 93 and still cooking, as well as making television appearances. I love that she loves crabapple jelly with her game (crabapple jelly is my favorite confiture to make in the fall) and that her favorite gadget is an ice cream maker … it’s mine too.

A Brit for all Americans: Alistair Cooke — The 100th anniversary of his birth was last Thursday and the Independent’s Sarah Chuchwell remembers the iconic Masterpiece Theatre host. (The Independent)

Delia Smith on pumpkin pie — It’s Thanksgiving week here in the U.S., and what’s Thanksgiving without a little pumpkin pie? But please, Delia, a store-bought pastry shell? Tsk, Tsk. I’ll let you off the hook since you’re British and the recipe’s supposed to be quick. (Telegraph)

Spend Christmas in London — Take advantage of the weak £ in the capital city this winter with these 25 tips. (Telegraph)

How to get British television worldwide — Jonathan over at Anglotopia has a two-part article on how to get British shows on your telly, even if you don’t have BBC America (which, of course, doesn’t offer every British show, but at least gives you a taste).

The 28th Great Christmas Pudding Race — If you’re in London on December 6, you can watch contestants run an obstacle course around Covent Garden Market while holding trays of Christmas pudding. Yeah, only in England. (The money raised goes to charity, though.)

This morning I was doing a bit of surfing for some fruitcake recipes and came upon a gallery of Christmas puddings on Delia Smith’s website. Yum! I’m one of those rare Americans who actually loves Christmas puddings, and their cousin, the fruitcake. The weekend after Thanksgiving (4th Thursday in November for my UK readers), rather than go holiday shopping with hoi polloi, I hole myself up in the kitchen with a variety of dried fruits, nuts, rums, and brandies, along with other goodies, and get to work on my fruitcakes, which take a couple weeks to “cure” before they’re ready for gift-giving/eating. (I give them to the handful of people I know who appreciate them, so if you’re my friend and hate fruitcake, don’t worry – I won’t saddle you with one.) I’ll write more about my stir-up Saturday & Sunday in a couple weeks. This year I’m thinking about doing a traditional steamed pudding for Christmas day, but it’ll depend if we have guests or not.

What about you? Like Christmas puddings and fruitcakes or loathe them? Tell me in the comments section below.

In yesterday’s Times Online, there was a fun article listing five British restaurants where James Bond, were he to exist, might dine with a lady friend. I was pleased to see The Fat Duck included. Heston Blumenthal’s restaurant is on my life list of restaurants; one of these days I hope to get outside London and check it out, maybe next summer, as I doubt I’ll have the time this December. Another restaurant I’m familiar with is Gidleigh Park in Devon, which I know through his Gidleigh Park Cookery Book — I actuallly own two copies. Although Hill is now running another iconic British restaurant, The Walnut Tree in Wales (another restaurant on my life list!), I’d love to stay and dine at Gidleigh Park, but must confess — I don’t see how Bond fits in with its Tudor-style decor. The rooms must be wildly suave and romantic.

If you can still find it on the newsstand, you might want to pick up the September 2008 issue of the BBC’s GoodFood magazine (the UK edition), which runs about $8.99 here in the U.S. It’s marked “best of British” and throughout are recipes celebrating English fare. One reason why I bought this particular issue is for the Cornish pasties recipe on page 96. My husband loves them, so in the next few weeks I’ll test this recipe for him. The recipe in my old King Arthur baking book has never turned out well.

There’s also a risotto-making workshop in here. I’ll confess … I’m a total cheat when it comes to risotto: I use a pressure cooker. And don’t let anyone try to tell you otherwise, but Italian grandmothers make their risottos in pressure cookers, too. I will not be bullied or swayed here.

The recipe I chose was the butternut squash and sage risotto on page 53. I followed the directions almost to the T, except for the pressure cooker bit, and substituted homemade chicken stock for the vegetable stock. Our au pair, who wasn’t too enthusiastic about eating squash, ended up having three servings. Oliver, of course, wouldn’t touch it … too yellow, plus those green bits on the top? Eww, the horror, the horror.

There was a fascinating article in yesterday’s Guardian that claimed, “Food, and real people’s experience of it, is still all about class.” The article was ostensibly about Jamie Oliver’s new television series called Ministry of Food*, which probably won’t reach American shores for a year or two, but then moved on to an analysis of the eating habits of the haves and have nots in Britain.

Certainly here in the U.S., where the dividing lines between classes are more fluid, there’s boatloads of evidence that folks with less disposable incomes eat worse than those of us who can afford watching the likes of Jamie and Nigella on cable television. But even knowing this, I found these lines fascinating and scary: “Sharp inequalities can be clearly mapped, even short distances apart, according to Dr Tim Lobstein, director of the childhood research programme at the International Association for the Study of Obesity. Travel the eight stops on the Jubilee line tube from Central London’s Westminster to Canning Town and you find a decrease in life expectancy of nearly one year for each station going east.” (My italics.) I’m not so sure the lines here in the U.S. are so dramatic. Those are some scary — and very visual — stats.

At any rate, this looks like a show I’ll look forward to. I used to think Jamie Oliver was this lispy, annoying twit, but as I’ve seen all he’s done — giving disadvantaged youth a chance in his restaurant Fifteen, going after the abominable institutional school lunch program in Britain — I have a lot of respect for his work. He may be a gazillionaire with a 2-acre kitchen garden to die for, but I respect him for not turning his back on those crippled by the system.

*The Ministry of Food was an actual entity set up during World War II under Britain’s agricultural department to oversee food rationing.