Notes: On Forage, Mushrooms and the Noma Cookbook

We do not stop the world when we eat; 

we go into it a little more deeply.

Olafur Eliasson (Noma)

Cep

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Allow me a paintbrush, a palette…a pile of artistic licence to tell of some friends of mine and their wild ways.  Boys they are, a huddle of them, bare’ approachable and and not easy to handle.  They can’t be tethered down and one won’t find them for looking.   But, one might come across them…

On the foreshore by night fighting the tide for a last Sea-bass; atop a tree, gathering Plums to pot a Pigeon in; plucking a Greylag large to feed a crowd.  Adventurous with tastes, unperturbed by roadkill, they’ll be smoking Mackerel in a filing-cabinet-cum-smoker; cooking Mullet in milk for fishcakes; stewing Cockles in a split can of cider on an open fire; barbecuing Samphire.  How very nineteenth century lyrical said a friend as I rhapsodised about baskets of Ceps, and indeed, these are the Huck Finn’s of today, the unassuming artistes of forage.

Dried Chanterelles

Last I called by, Muntjac was roasting in the oven, surfaces brimming with mushrooms gathered, some dried, a hoard: Shaggy Parasols; Chanterelles, orange and sweet-apricot-scented; something blue.  Another fellow appeared a basket in his hand large to gather wood, in it full - Penny-Buns, Ceps, plentiful as a baker’s.

We ate then Parasol:

The cap cut into long, thick strips, doused long in egg and salt and pepper breadcrumbs, fried quick and served slathered unashamedly in mayonnaise.  A dream.

Parasol Mushrooms in Bowl of Apples

The Ceps so plentiful I took some home.

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This weekend, another scene: ‘midst fashionistas, florists and folklorists, stepping the streets of London town…  On gathering my basket and boots to return home, risen at dawn to the cockney cries of Columbia Road Flower Market, pressed into my hands was a copy of Noma, Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine by René Redzepi.  I have long hankered after this book and was delighted to be given it.  (Thanks Laur!) It is indeed an extraordinary book, but with over half of the pages covered in photos worthy of the wall, it is not a manual.  The recipes themselves, so daunting that I’m glad I didn’t turn to it to cook my Ceps, relying instead on friendly advice and Elizabeth David (see below).

Indeed, I now understand that the book is less a cookbook and more a book to wander through, wonder at, that tells of the story behind the Michelin starred Copenhagen restaurant Noma.  No longer silent, secret, unassuming; at Noma forage is ostentatious, it’s an artform plucked or peacocking, it is the very edgiest of foodthinking, where food overlaps with artthought and critical theory.  But on closer inspection, I am also ready to bow to this.  Of René’s moment of illumination, he writes:

I realized that we had to exploit the seasons in a better way, so that you could only get a particular dish here and now.  We should explore the extremes of nature, seek out the thousand or more species of edible fungi, the many wild plants, roots and seashore plants. […] The guests dining at Noma should feel a sensation of time and place in their very bones.

Ingredients were thus combined not only with those of same season, but those of their natural habitat.  If venison was on the menu, the meat should be served with snails, pine shoots and mushrooms.  Thus recipes such as: Bouillon of Steamed Birchwood, Chanterelles and Fresh  Hazelnut; Stone Crab and Beach Mustard, Cockle Gel or simply Snails and Moss.  And abruptly, the nineteenth century lyricists and the uber modern restaurant look no longer askance upon one another, artistes the both.

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Ceps

Not Ceps and Poached Truffle Meringue (à la Noma) but Cèpes à la Bordelaise (Elizabeth David) with Brown Rice Risotto.

In her French Provincial Cooking, Elizabeth David quotes the recipe of Alcide Bontou (refer to the book to read more).  I shall do likewise:

“Choose 12 firm cèpes, small rather than large, and with dark heads; remove the stalks and peel them, but only wipe the heads; make incisions on the underside of the heads with the point of a knife.  Put a glass of olive oil in a frying-pan; when it is hot, put in the heads of the cèpes; turn them over when they have browned on one side.  Season with salt and pepper.

Chop the stalks with four cloves of garlic and some parsley.  Throw this mixture over the cèpes.  Let them all sauter in the pan for 3 or 4 minutes.

You may add a tablespoon of soft white breadcrumbs.  Serve.”

I made a pseudo-risotto with Short Grain Brown Rice, butter, Shallots, Bay-Leaves, White Wine and Wighton, a local creamy but hard cheese.  And served the Ceps on top.  Divine.

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Another great friend, longdeserving of a blog post dedicated to her green fingers, her inexhaustible creative energy and her kitchen concoctions, whose latest addition to the home is a goat in the back garden (soon I hope we’ll be on milk and cheese)… makes a Puffpall Pâté of such flavour it is also worthy of Michelin stars.  

Puffball Pâté

I haven’t the exact recipe, and I rather doubt there is one.  Try:

Chop and very gently fry up Puffballs with Garlic and Cumin in Butter.  Blend the lot adding Salt and Pepper or a touch of Soy Sauce.  Spread on bread for a deeply mushroom flavour edged with garlic and cumin.  You could also try adding cream, cream-cheese.

If you do attempt this let me know!

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Notes:

 -The Noma cookbook is indeed a gift, only on the verge of my foray into it, I hope to write more anon.

 -Writing at first light, I espy another forager: a grey squirrel feasting on the last of the overripe Bullace.
(In postscript - now mid-November, a friend writes from wild woodlands of Tuscany: I strongly reccommend Parasol Mushrooms, ripped, dipped in Egg, Breadcrumbs, Garlic and drizzled in Lemon Juice...  As only yesterday Amelia came across a field thick with same Macrolepiota procera, I too hope to try this in the week.)

Simple French Cooking for English Homes by X. Marcel Boulestin

On ne mange bien que chez-soi

In the traditions of Elizabeth David and Julia Child, with Simple French Cooking for English Homes, Marcel Boulestin brings the best of French cooking to the English table.  In his terms, this is not the food eaten in chichi Hotels or pretentious French restaurants, this is the food of wayside inns and the family home.  As my own lean is likewise, towards the provincial and the homely, I cannot but champion a book that demystifies a cassoulet or a pot of rilletes and spends a lengthy paragraph on the art of an oeuf poché.

Marcel Boulestin does not skimp on the preface, peppered with idiosyncratic literary quotations, which demonstrate his own background as a journalist and translator.  He appears to believe that food should be common parlance of the cultured, not shut behind scullery doors.  Indeed, the preface is followed by a collection of Remarks, one of which, endorsing food’s place in conversation, I particularly liked:

Do not be afraid to talk about food.  Food which is worth eating is worth discussing. And there is the occult power of words which somehow will develop its qualities.

A brief glossary, further quotes, including brilliant Brillat-Savarin on hospitality, and then we are thrown into the recipes.  It is always a pleasure to decipher the French terminology, much like one might rifle through the pages of a Menu, sat at a brasserie in France.  The translations given might even serve to illuminate what that incomprehensible plat du jour indeed was!  A chapter on Soups, including a Pot au Feu, is followed by one on Sauces - a favoured French skill - and then Eggs; Fish; Meat; Pastries and Sweets; and a delightful final chapter Sundries in which Marcel Boulestin amasses the remainder of what he considers vital French food:  Gherkins are here placed alongside Pineapple Wine and the extraordinary, and quite delicious-sounding Crème de Camembert, in which the cheese is steeped in White wine, left over night, beat with butter, reshaped and topped with breadcrumbs. 

Unlike cookbooks of today, rich with lifestyle, colloquialisms and sumptuous photography, those of yesteryear such as this Simple French Cooking…, published in 1923, were manuals in the strictest sense of the term.  Marcel Boulestin does not take any knowledge, or common-sense it seems, for granted.  To the point that the poached egg recipe is followed by one for Oeufs Pochés Béarnaise – Poach your eggs and put them on a stiff béarnaise sauce, for Oeufs Pochés Sauce Tomate – Poach your eggs and cover them with tomato sauce.  And, indeed, for Oeufs Pochés au Maïs – Poach your eggs and put them on a dish of sweetcorn.  But, perhaps this is where the charm of this cookbook lies.  Rife with idiosyncratic whim, it serves also as an efficient culinary reference… particularly astute at capturing those French meals of days yonder.  Although not as rich in anecdote as the books of Elizabeth David, the writing is lucid, the tone eloquent and Marcel Boulestin succinctly renders French food accessible to the English cook.  

Read the full review

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Simple French Cooking for English Homes

By X. Marcel Boulestin

Introduction by Jill Norman

First Published in 1923

Published by Quadrille Publishing, Classic Voices in Food, 2011

ISBN – 978-1-84400-981-7

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My thanks to Quadrille for the review copy of this book.

The art, or otherwise, of food writing.

A steaming Summer’s eve’, once again running late, I joined a friend, wine-buff, entrepreneur and surreptitious reader of food-literature in his London backyard over a chilli-mackerel-couscous, and there was asparagus too and feta and a bottle of something French and White…  As conversation veered and the light waned he scurried away, returning, dragging from pouches and pockets, from hidden nooks, beloved bindings of food-writing.  Like a collector who comes upon some other, not rival, morelike apprentice, with whom they can gush unguarded as to their too-oft’-solitary passion, I was passed first, ‘midst murmurings, Brillat-Savarin’s The Physiology of Taste or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy, then Alexandre Dumas’ Encyclopedia of Food and Nigel Slater’s Kitchen Diaries…

Watching this friend, erudite and articulate, bringing food-writing into his conversation as he might 15th Century Italian literature, awoke a long-nurtured query: Do food and thought illuminate or interfere with one another?

I am since compelled to think upon the art (or otherwise) of Food Writing.  For therein lies the dilemma: is such writing worthy of consideration as an art, or, dealing with the pleasures, the mere sustenance of the body, as opposed to the perturbations of the mind, is it rather one of the cruder written forms, certainly not to be mistaken for an art?

It is said that Jorge Luis Borges offered only a bowl of rice at his dinner parties, for fear that the food might otherwise interfere with the conversation; his guests were there to converse about matters of the mind, and not the baser ones of the bowl.  


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Small Adventures in Cooking by James Ramsden

"a hip addition to the kitchen shelf"

 James Ramsden’s Small Adventures in Cooking recounts exactly that: a mini-voyage of culinary exploration, through Corner Shops and Cheap Cuts, Emulsions and Macerations.  Small they may be, but our adventurer is intrepid, unflawed by the likes of Ox cheek or Duck Rilletes, unflailing faced with the Korean fermented cabbage dish, Kimchi, or soused Mackerel.  Convivial and colourful from the outset, the reader is swiftly drawn in, to venture alongside Ramsden in this culinary foray.

Separated into eight unorthodox sections, Ramsden writes food as he thinks it: from Va Va Voyages, where you’ll find the exotic and quick to cook, to Corner Shop Capers, a eulogy to the quirky ingredients available in city corner-shops, including Soviet Salmon Soup and a Pitta Pizza topped with the unlikely Tinned Fried Onions(!).   Morning Missions is dedicated to breakfasting, suggesting Home-Made Baked Beans, Huevos Rancheros and Chilli Hot Chocolate as additions to the breakfast table.  Being a devotee to the art of breaking the fast myself, this quite won me over.  Exploring the Cheap Cuts; Formal Forays and Feeding the Flocks are self-explanatory. The latter I found vaguely disappointing, although the food is fun – kebabs, fondues – it has the feel of pub platters.  That said, the Goat Curry had me swooning, as Ramsden writes:  “Curry is  a great party-dish”, to be stacked on rice and served with a multitude of chutneys, raitas and home-made breads.  And, I cannot but triumph a cookery book that includes a chapter on Preserves for the Pantry, particularly one that suggests how to use them, saving each of us from that tendency of filling the pantry, only to find same preserves festering on the top shelves years later.  Finally, in Surfing the Stumbling Blocks he tackles those notions that tend to terrorise the novice cook: from Shortcrust Pastry to Hollandaise, smartly rendering the seemingly impossible, possible.

The introduction sets the tone for the book: “Surely the kitchen should be a place of comfort and reassurance, not terror and torment”.  A voice at once personable and exuberant accompanies the reader;  hip without being daunting, it offers guidance without preaching.  The recipes are succinct but comprehensive, couched in tips and tales, ever reminding the reader that cooking is a joyous experiment, recipes are: “a guide, not a gospel”.  Intrinsic to this is the very malleability of the recipes, all to be “tweaked”, “tarted”, the leftovers used “tomorrow”, spawning same flexibility in the novice-cook, and this is surely one of the hardest kitchen arts for the unexperienced, unadventurous soul, so Ramsden writes:  “Trust your instincts”, “Have an amenable agenda” and “Make your itinerary flexible”.

One of the most pertinent mantras of the book: “Keep your ear to the ground” encourages the reader to “Be Chatty” reminding us that cooking is a communal act that commences with sourcing the produce and culminates in that most profound and joyous of communions, the sharing of food.  Talk to the shopkeepers, he writes, “as well as making for great entertainment, such discussions are inspiring reminders that there are very few absolutes in cooking”.  In this tone, Ramsden recalls an encounter with a “bonkers polish man” who introduced him to an apparently tasty Tinned Sorrel Soup with a Boiled Egg.  He takes this interaction one step further by inviting responses to his recipes via Twitter and Email, reminding us that cookery is an art to be explored and above all to be shared

Much as one might pretend otherwise, a cookery book is no longer simply a manual, it has a secondary function: it must induce pleasurable browsing, preferably with a glass of wine in the hand whilst dreaming-up next week’s banquets.  This is a beautiful book, quite the sort to curl up on the sofa with.  And, a stencilled card and gaudy orange binding, sumptuous photos and near-scrawling notes on carnet-like pages, it proves a hip addition to the kitchen shelf!

Aimed at an audience of twenty or thirty-somethings, the book is far from highbrow, it does not indulge in the literary meanderings of an Elizabeth David, nor for that matter is it a scientific tome.  So intent is the writer on keeping the kitchen a light-hearted place, a gentle colloquialism verges on (and happily fails to fall into) the Jamie Oliver tendency of catchphrasing: expressions such as “you get the idea” might put some off, and the book would perhaps be unsuited to the culinary snob. 

I say this, and yet, written with such flair, so abounding in joy, and such an utter pleasure to read, I wouldn’t hesitate to pass it on to any of my entourage.

A cook-book that combines a boy-next-door charm and lack of pretension, with an erudite wealth of culinary knowledge, an evident depth of research and recipes destined to please multiple pallets on myriad occasions, with his Small Adventures in Cooking, James Ramsden heralds an exciting new generation of cookery writing.

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Small Adventures in Cooking by James Ramsden

New Voices in Food, Quadrille Publishing, London 2011, 191 pages.  
 ISBN: 9781844009572