Parsnip Risotto with Parsnip crisps


Parsnip-risotto.JPG
Originally uploaded by louise_marston.

I quite like making stock; when I’ve paid £13 for a chicken, it makes me feel considerably more virtuous to know that not a drop of chickeny-goodness has gone to waste. However, although I diligently make, strain, reduce and store my stock, I’m often at a loss for the best way to show it off. It seems a waste of all that effort to just bung it into a curry or sauce. Which is why I find myself turning to risotto again and again when I have chicken stock in the house.

I’ve seen copies of Jamie’s Italy in various people’s houses over the past few months and have resisted buying, even though it looks very good, as I already own Marcella Hazan’s The Essentials of Classical Italian Cooking and Giorgio Locatelli’s Made in Italy: Food and Stories. Browsing through other people’s copies, however, (and I am certainly not above this – if I’m in your house, no cookbook is safe) a couple of unusual recipes struck me, namely recipes for a parsnip risotto and an artichoke one. The parsnip one particularly intrigued me; the idea of the savoury stock and the sweet, earthy parsnips seemed particularly appealing. Although I didn’t have the echt Jamie version to work from, I used my usual risotto tactics, following along with Giorgio to make sure I got the technique right. The parsnip crisps occurred to me at the last minute; I’ve been buying rather a lot of them in Pret recently.

Parsnip Risotto with Parsnip Crisps

1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 small parsnips
1 tbsp butter plus 1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 glass white wine
500 ml chicken stock
1/2 cup risotto rice (arborio, carnaroli or vialone nano)
1/2 tsp thyme
2-3 tbsp grated parmesan

Finely slice half of one of the parsnips, and finely dice the rest. Heat the butter and olive oil in a large frying pan or saute pan and soften the onions. Once the onions have started to go translucent, add the diced parsnips and cook together with the onions until their almost browning. Stir in the rice, and fry for 2-3 minutes to toast the rice. Add the white wine and stir until it’s all absorbed, then start to add the chicken stock a little at a time. Stir between additions, and start to taste the rice after about 10-15 minutes. When the grains only have a little hardness left, add the chopped thyme, then keep adding stock and stirring until the grains yield all the way through. In between the stirring, heat a small frying pan and add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil (not the good stuff). Add the sliced parsnip and fry until they are brown and crisp. Remove to a plate lined with kitchen towel to absorb the excess oil, and sprinkle with a little salt.
Once the risotto is done, take the pan off the heat and let stand while you slice off another piece of cold butter and grate the parmesan. Stir these in then serve, with a little extra grated parmesan, the parsnip crisps and a little more thyme on top.

Cook’s notes: I used the gravy from making Muriel’s chicken as well as the stock for this. As this was already flavoured with thyme, lemon and garlic, it was a little too much for the dish, and just the plain chicken stock would have been better. The dish could also have stood a little more wine to add a bit of acidity to the earthiness and sweetness of the parsnips.

A tale of two beef dishes

I was in an English Food mood this weekend, partly due to Sam’s ‘English Food is not a joke’ challenge (and see previous post for more on that). I had bought a couple of packets of braising beef last week, with a vague plan to make some stew over the weekend that would act as an easy ready meal this week when I knew there would be a couple of late nights. In the end, I split the packets up and used them two different ways, both very satisfying and highly English. First on the agenda was pasties – good lunch food for those painting and decorating all weekend. The second packet went into a version of Jamie Oliver’s dark sticky stew, a basic beef stew enriched with Guinness and marmite – highly flavoured comfort food for a Sunday night.

I also made a batch of scones with the heat from the same oven as the pasties. It’s easy to forget how easy scones really are, with their connotations of an elaborate Victorian tea. But it took only 30 minutes from deciding to make them to taking them out of the oven. The finishing touch to a very English weekend (even if we did eat them with Creme Fraiche and jam).


Cornish Pasties
I adapted this from Gary Rhodes’ recipe in ‘New British Classics’, my only significant aberration being to substitute carrots for the traditional swede (which I didn’t have any of). I also substituted some strong white bread flour in the pastry, to help make it a little tougher and more robust. This only partly worked – my pastry was still a bit fragile. I have also specified a smaller sized pasty – Gary suggests only 4 from this mixture, but I found these too large, and therefore tricky to eat in one go.

For the pastry:
200g strong white bread flour
200g plain flour
100g butter
100g lard

450g braising beef (chuck, flank and rump could all be used), cut into 1cm cubes
2 medium potatoes, peeled and cut into 1cm cubes
2 carrots, peeled, halved and sliced
1 medium onion, finely chopped

Make the pastry. This is made as normal shortcrust pastry – make sure you season the flour well. My preferred method is to put the fat and flour into the freezer for 5 to 10 minutes, then use the food processor to cut in the fat, and add cold water to bring the pastry together in the processor. Turn the dough out and knead it lightly to make a stronger pastry, then wrap in cling film and rest in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, cut up the meat and season well with salt and pepper. Prepare all the vegetables, and divide each type into 4 piles.

Once 30 minutes has passed, remove the pastry from the fridge. Divide the dough into 8 equal pieces, and, taking one piece at a time, roll each one out into a circle about the thickness of a pound coin (around 3mm). Arrange 1/8th of the meat and vegetables in layers down the centre of the circle, first the potatoes and carrots, then the meat and finally the onions. Season well with salt and white pepper (if you have it). Brush the edge of the circle with water all the way around, and bring the edges together. Press the edges together and then crimp the top to seal it well. Place on lined baking sheet and repeat with the remaining pieces of pastry dough.

Chill for 20 minutes, then bake at 180C for 1 hour. Allow to cool a little before eating.

A Dark Sticky Stew
Adapted from Jamie Oliver’s Dark Sticky Stew in ‘Jamie’s Kitchen’.

450g braising beef steak
2 tablespoons flour
2 sprigs thyme, finely chopped
2 small onions, chopped
3 large carrots, cut into batons
8 – 10 mushrooms, quartered
1 rib celery, finely chopped
125ml Guinness
500ml chicken stock
1 teaspoon Marmite

Preheat the oven to 170C. Combine the thyme and flour and toss with the beef until it’s coated. Heat some olive oil in a casserole dish, and brown the beef really well in two batches. Remove the beef and put to one side. Soften and brown the vegetables in the same pan. Then add the Guinness, reduce and add the chicken stock, Marmite and add the beef back in. Cover with a lid and put into the oven for 1 hour, or until the beef is tender. Serve with boiled potatoes (or even better, mash) and some cabbage or broccoli.

Celebrating English Food

This is my entry for Sam’s ‘Fish & Quips – why English food is not a joke’ round-up. I started by brainstorming all the things I think of when I think of English Food, because it seems to me that it’s a pretty diverse subject:

Fresh produce / regionality Home Baking
Rhubarb, apples, cobnuts, fish, peas, round lettuce, plums, greengages, gooseberries

Preserving
Smoked fish, kippers, cheeses: Cheddar, Lancashire, Wensleydale

 Split tin loaves baked once a week for the family, cottage loaf, Eccles cakes, Sally Lunns, Scones with Clotted Cream
Food for workers Victorian Cooking
Pasties, Bedfordshire clangers, Steak & Kidney pudding, Sausage & Mash, Fish & Chips, Yorkshire pudding with beef Formal dinner parties, establishing dinner as the main meal, nursery food, Game, Roast beef & Horseradish, syllabub, jellies, Steamed syrup pudding, Jam Rolypoly

So, I decided to come at this from the angle of Working Food. My choice of dish to represent Working Food is Sausage & Mash. Also known as ‘Bangers and Mash’, this is a dish that spans the whole of English society – from cheap sausages, bulked out with lots of bread and fat and instant mash to elevated chefs like Gary Rhodes, and all the dinner tables and gastro-pubs in between, this dish is at home anywhere. I’ve also served it at a dinner party (albeit a pretty informal one) with a rich onion gravy, as per Nigella’s suggestion in How to Eat. At heart, this has much in common with Working Food the world over – cheap, spiced preserved meat combined with lots of filling, comforting carbohydrate.

Another major reason for choosing sausage and mash is that it has inspired some of the greatest English food writing – I refer, of course, to the majestic prose in Nigel Slater’s ‘Real Food’. And so it seemed only fitting to follow the great man’s words to create the dish:

Sausage & Mash – adapted from Nigel Slater’s Real Food

Choose really good quality pork sausages. I went for Lincolnshire sausages from Tesco on this occasion, but my favourite is Duchy Originals Pork and Herb. British sausages have a particular spice blend which is not always present in other countries, and can’t really be replicated by an Italian sausage, for instance. Gary Rhodes says the key flavourings are mace, sage, thyme,onion and Worcestershire sauce. I also think that white pepper is important.

Heat a heavy frying pan (I used my Lodge cast-iron pan) and add the sausages.

Cook over a medium-low heat for 40-45 minutes, cooking the meat through very gently, keeping it moist and developing lots of sticky goo on the outside of the sausage. Turn occasionally, but be careful not to pierce the skin – and definitely don’t prick the skin before you start! A juicy sausage depends on keeping as many of the juices in as possible, and if it’s a good quality, meaty sausage, it won’t split.

Meanwhile, peel some Maris Piper potatoes, cut them into even chunks and cover with cold water.

Bring to the boil, and simmer for 15-20 minutes (depending on the size of the chunks), until they are tender to the point of a knife. Drain and push through a potato ricer (or you can mash by hand – I have my ricer for just this purpose). Add a good deal of butter and mix into the hot riced potatoes, then pour in some hot milk and beat with a wooden spoon to make it light and fluffy. [Nigel’s proportions are 900g potatoes, 100g butter and 100ml milk, but I go more or less by eye.]

Dollop on the plate and serve with the sausages and proper Heinz tomato ketchup (although Heinz is an American company, there is something completely British in my mind about Heinz tomato ketchup).

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Bad-tempered Cookies

It’s quarter to midnight and I’ve just finished mopping tomato ketchup off the floor. Cookies are a nightmare. No really. I’ve had it up to here.

I was a fool. I read Adam’s enthusiastic, nay, evangelical posts about Martha Stewart’s cookie recipe and I had to give it a go. More fool me. Firstly, the recipe needed to be translated from the dreaded American cups. American cups as a baking measurement are just infuriating – for some reason the good old US of A refuses to use scales while baking, just as they cling to pounds and inches. Cups are never the same weight twice, especially when you’re talking about something like flour. Then there’s the ingredients. American All-Purpose Flour is actually somewhere between Plain Flour and Strong White Flour, and American granulated sugar is not as coarse as British granulated but not as fine as caster sugar.

So I took Adam’s recipe, and measured it carefully, substituting approximate British equivalents and … just look what happened:

Isn’t that the ugliest batch of cookies you’ve ever seen? The first set were gigantic and undercooked in the middle, the second and third batches better, but still ugly, the third set I burnt (those ones in the lower right-hand corner aren’t actually double chocolate – they just got baked for half an hour!).

Maybe it wasn’t the cookies after all – maybe they were just a karmic sign, because just after I pulled out the last baking tray, this happened:

You see, all week I’ve been avoiding a couple of kitchen chores: to scrub the kitchen floor and to wash down the skirting boards and door frames in preparation for painting them this weekend. The Ketchup Disaster ensured that I had to wipe down the skirting boards, and walls, and mop the floor. So maybe the cookies were just a sign after all: don’t waste your time on frivolous baking projects, get on the floor and clean, damn you!

So it’s Jeffrey Steingarten’s cookie recipe next – let’s hope I find a better time to try it, karmically-speaking.

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A new kitchen


The kitchen
Originally uploaded by louise_marston.

We finally moved into our new house last weekend, after 3 weeks of being homeless. The kitchen has all the things I want, and few of the things I don’t; living in 6 different rented flats in the past 7 years has given me a good appreciation for what I need in a kitchen.
Lighting is important, and this place has plenty, including 3 skylights which allow lots of natural light in – I’ve lusted after kitchen skylights since seeing Nigella’s on ‘Nigella Bites’. It also has a gas stove but electric fan oven, my preferred heat source combination. The hob has a central wok burner, which is not essential, but really does make a difference when you’re trying to stir-fry and not stir-boil.
I am gradually adjusting to the cupboard space, and working out how to organise the kitchen. My strategy (which has evolved from kitchen to kitchen) is to divide the kitchen up into major tasks (food prep, washing up, cooking on the stove, baking, etc) and designate storage space for each task close to where it will be performed. So, pastry items like cake tins, rolling pin, flour live near a piece of worktop suitable for rolling out pastry and near my KitchenAid mixer.
Here are some of the other things I have learned from my various kitchens:

  • Spices work best in a drawer. I have some great little metal tins for some of mine, which live on their side so I can see the labels. Alternatively, label your jars on the top so you can easily see them all.
  • I have a plastic drawer from Muji that lives in a cupboard and stores most of my baking paraphenalia (cutters, sugar thermometer, KitchenAid accessories, tart tins). This keeps them tidy and also makes them much easier to move house with.
  • Cake tins can happily live somewhere fairly inaccessible. I bake regularly, but don’t often use the same tin twice in a row, meaning that each type of tin is needed fairly infrequently.
  • Stack chopping boards and baking trays on their sides if you have room. This makes it much easier to get them out. Lakeland produce a specific rack for this purpose.
  • Oils, vinegars and condiments like Worcester sauce are best kept somewhere near the stove, but should also be kept fairly cool and away from the light if you can – and it’s rare that you can find anywhere that fulfils all these criteria. I tend to go for close above the others, so I can grab something and splosh it in the pan in an instant. (By the way, sesame oil should be kept in the fridge – as with all nut oils, it can easily go rancid).

Periodic Table of Desserts

Via Bob del Grosso at Michael Ruhlman’s blog comes this gem:

Periodic Table of Desserts

“You’ve seen those charts that say, like, “Periodic Table of the Vegetables” or “Periodic Table of the Sausages”?
They annoy me. Because they’re not periodic. They have no vertical or horizontal correspondences. The actual periodic table of chemical elements has structure — that’s why it’s cool.

As Bob’s post says, this is very cool – the exact poster that inspired this effort hangs in Tante Marie’s cooking school, above the Pastry table in the back, and looking at it used to annoy me too! The thing is, cooking is about science and structure, so why take an important diagram like the Periodic Table and put some unstructured information into it!
I think this is brilliant – I may even order the poster…

A better British bolognese

Minced meat, principally beef, is a British staple, foundation of such family classics as spag bol, lasagne and cottage pie. It is often proposed as a key ingredient for the sort of happy, Bisto-family meal to which we are all supposed to aspire. However, the sort of quick-cook methods that are sometimes described for these dishes can rob them of their comfort value, producing meal, grainy meat in a thin, insipid sauce. I am not proposing a slavish adherence to authentic Italian methods, because we all recognise that while a Bolognese sauce in the UK bears little relation to any dishes from Bologna, it can still be a fine thing in it’s own right.

I make these sort of dishes a fair bit – and it’s handy to cook a British bolognese sauce in a large quantity, and freeze some or use it in a different dish. The basics are fairly well known, and can be got from most basic cookbooks: soften onions and other vegetables; brown the meat; add liquids and flavourings, simmer until done. Hopefully the tips below will elevate this comfort dish from ordinary to exceptional:

  • Firstly, get your mince from a source you trust. I am not going to advocate going to your butcher and asking for a whole piece of beef to be minced in front of you, or mince it yourself (although for the best hamburger, that you can serve rare, please go ahead!). Mince is necessarily unidentifiable when you buy it at the supermarket, and will have been made from the cheaper cuts, so it’s important to go for a good source, and maybe pay a bit extra to get better quality meat.
  • Don’t go for the ultra-lean packet – some fat is good here as it will keep the meat tender and moist. 10 – 15% is good.
  • Brown the meat separately. This can be done before or after cooking the veg – I tend to prefer to brown it first in a very hot pan, removing the meat to a plate and pouring off any excess fat before cooking the veg in the same pan, and finally combining it all back together. This allows you to get the meat very brown and develops lots of meaty flavour – don’t stir it too much to start with or it will just boil as water is release. Wait for a brown crust to develop before breaking up the lumps and turning them over.
  • Vegetables – onions are a must, and I like to use chopped celery and carrots, each about 50% of the volume of chopped onions (measurements don’t have to be exact). I also use mushrooms whenever I have them in, either chopped fine or sliced, and cooked after the beef on a fairly high heat to brown them a little and cook off most of their water.
  • Liquids – possibilities include red wine, beef stock, milk, water, chopped tomatoes (tinned or fresh, skinned ones) or passata (sieved tomatoes). If using wine, use about a wine glass full, and add it first, reducing it down before adding other liquids. Marcella Hazan, the great Italian food writer, swears by cooking the meat gently in milk for about 30 minutes, until it is absorbed before adding the tomatoes. I have tried it, and it is tasty, but if I want to get it simmering quickly and then leave it alone, I’ll skip that step. I virtually never use beef stock as I never have it in the house, but might use chicken stock or a stock cube.
  • Flavourings – traditionally include a bay leaf. You can also include other herbs, especially parsley or thyme. Dried mixed herbs are fine as long as they are added with the liquid so that they have a good long time to soften and release their flavour. I also like Worcestershire sauce, added near the end to boost the meaty flavour, and tomato paste, added to the vegetables and stirred in before the liquid.
  • The most important step – once everything is in the pot, simmer it very gently, on the lowest heat that will still liberate the occasional bubble. Leave the lid off and simmer for at least 2 hours, or until the sauce has thickened up – this could take up to 4 hours, depending on the size and shape of your pot.

Once you have a lovely, thick sauce, taste it and season with salt and pepper. This sauce benefits from being really tasty, so don’t go too easy with the salt (although if you have used a stock cube, you may find it’s fine as it is). And then you can go ahead and make dinner! Favourite uses: spag bol, with plenty of parmesan on top (or use rigatoni or penne instead – they’re actually much more suitable than spaghetti for this sort of sauce, but I have a nostalgic affection for spaghetti nonetheless). Lasagne can be easily constructed, either with a bechamel or an easy sauce of creme fraiche and cheese. For cottage pie, stir in some frozen peas, top with really buttery mashed potatoes and bake until it’s bubbling and brown on top.

Update:

I actually made bolognese this evening, so here is a slightly more accurate recipe:

A British Bolognese Sauce

  • 1 kg beef mince

  • 1 jar passata

  • 3 medium onions, chopped

  • 2 large carrots, chopped

  • 2-3 ribs of celery, choppped

  • 250g mushrooms, chopped

  • 100ml red wine

  • 500ml chicken stock

  • 1 tbsp tomato paste

  • 1 tsp dried mixed herbs

    • olive oil, salt, pepper

    Chop the onions fairly finely, and gently soften in oil in a large casserole (I use my Le Creuset). While they are cooking, heat a large saute or frying pan over a high heat and brown lumps of the mince in batches. Leave the meat to develop a good brown crust before stirring. Remove each batch to a plate with a slotted spoon once it’s done. While the meat is cooking, chop the celery and carrots and add to the onions to soften.

    Once the meat is cooked, add the chopped mushrooms and brown. Add the tomato paste and cook for about a minute before deglazing the pan with the wine. Reduce the wine until it’s fairly thick, then scrape the whole lot on top of the vegetables. Add the meat to the casserole as well, with the passata, stock and mixed herbs and bring too the boil. TUrn the heat down and simmer for at least an hour or as long as you’ve got. Top up with hot water if it gets too thick or dry.

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    We apologise for the delay – some links to keep you going

    This is the traditional post that appears every 3 months or so to explain my absence. But I really have got a good excuse this time – we’re buying a house, so the past 2 months has been occupied with viewing houses, estate agents, and more
    recently with monstrous quantities of forms and documentation as we edge closer to exchange & completion.
    Fingers crossed this will all be over soon, and then I can get back to my resolution to write more often (unless I get sidetracked by choosing paint colours, and putting up shelves…)

    In the meantime, occupy yourselves with some other fabulous ladies of food:

    • Clotilde Dusoulier‘s book, ‘Chocolate and Zucchini’ now has a UK publishing date – just have to wait for May.
    • Heidi Swanson of 101 Cookbooks has just had her second book published. Check out the wonderful, healthy recipes on her website (and the not-so-healthy).
    • I’ve just finished ‘Julie & Julia’, which, like the books above, originated with a blog. I found a lot of familiar territory there – food, mad cooking until late at night, US food references, including Julia Child playing a central role, and a twenty-something girl who got married in her early twenties – sound familiar?? It’s very funny, and I romped through it in just a few days – highly recommended.
    • Gordon Ramsay is apparently looking for ‘a new Fanny Craddock‘ for the 21st Century – and therefore has launched the ‘Find me a Fanny’ competition. Good lord.

    I’ve actually been overdosing on Ramsay over the past couple of days – there’s an interesting interview with him in this month’s Waitrose Food Illustrated, and I’ve just acquired his ‘Just Desserts’ cookbook, which looks excellent, although I’ve not had time to try anything from it yet.
    Many people criticise his aggressive attitude and apparent misogyny, but I am pretty sympathetic towards him. Firstly, he clearly knows what he’s talking about when it comes to both food and running successful restaurants, which gives him huge credibility. Secondly, I always find him very compelling to watch – he wants to raise people’s game in terms of cooking, and I think that’s a great aspiration.

    He’s at the forefront of a general move to reveal the inner workings of professional kitchens, which started with Marco Pierre-White, and was hugely influenced by Anthony Bourdain’s ‘Kitchen Confidential’. Programmes like the F-word, the new Masterchef and (god-forbid) the dreadful Hell’s Kitchen are starting to make this difference more apparent to the general public., rather than just professionals and foodies. Having had a glimpse of what it’s like to work in a professional kitchen, I don’t think that Gordon Ramsay’s methods are particularly outrageous; although they are certainly shoutier than is completely necessary, they work for him. I think it’s hard to compare the atmosphere in a professional kitchen with most types of work or management – it’s much more akin to the military or emergency services than any office or retail work – much less important, obviously, but fast work, quick decisions and high pressure. It’s a very different proposition to cooking at home, even when you’re very skilled, and not for everyone.

    Surprise cake


    Surprise cake
    Originally uploaded by louise_marston.

    The picture looked quite appetising. You can see it too if you have a copy of ‘Jamie’s Kitchen’ by Jamie Oliver. Go ahead, take a look. “That looks good” I thought. “That looks moist, a little crumbly, a lovely teatime cake”. And I even had beetroot. the recipes most esoteric ingredient, lying around from my organic box a few weeks ago. So I set to work. Something should have tipped me off though. Maybe the use of olive oil instead of butter or another fat. Maybe the need for virtually a whole jar of honey to sweeten it, as there was no other sugar in the recipe. And maybe the colour of the batter after I had added the beetroot mash. It was purple – very purple indeed. But I persevered, popped it in the oven, and prepared to unveil it for pudding that evening when my parents were coming round to eat.

    Everyone was suitably amused at the colour, and not a little apprehensive when they heard that this was a beetroot-based cake. But all bravely accepted and tasted a slice. I think it was my other half who first voiced his opinion. “This is terrible” he said. Unfortunately my mum and I were pretty much in agreement. There was no getting away from it – it tasted mostly of beetroot and little else. It wasn’t sweet enough to really be cake, with a harsh, bitter note which I put down to the beetroot combined with my use of Chestnut Honey. My Dad bravely finished his slice, but could not be prevailed on to accept seconds. And the conclusion? Beetroot and cake are not natural partners, so beware any recipe that calls for over 1lb of them. And Jamie Oliver must have been thinking of an entirely different recipe when he took that photo. Reassuringly, I have not been the only one to come to these conclusions – others have had a similar experience.

    January Cooking

    In the reading time afforded by the Christmas holidays, I have been composing a list of recipes to tackle in the next few weeks. This started out at a mental list, but then I committed it to post-it, and now I’m posting it for the world to see – in the hope that it will help me actually tackle them all.

    Lentil & Chestnut Soup from Feast: Food That Celebrates Life by Nigella Lawson
    I made this a couple of years ago, and spent ages trying to remember where I got the recipe from. All I remembered that it had chestnuts, and was the best, most wintry soup I made that year. This one I accomplished this afternoon – there’s no picture, because it’s not the most exciting soup to look at, as you might expect from the ingredients list.

    Rudolph Pie also from Feast
    This is to use up the cold venison I have in my fridge from Boxing Day at my parents house. Going to do this tomorrow.

    Marmalade
    The Blood Orange Marmalade I made last year is nearly out, so time to make some more as soon as Seville Oranges are in the shops. This year I will either use the recipe from my new copy of the The Cranks Bible or from MFK Fisher’s description of her family recipe in With Bold Knife and Fork. This one sounds like it could be wonderful, but includes no very specific quantities and requires 3 days!

    Pumpkin & Mango Chutney Parcels
    Pasta stuffed with the butternut squash I’ve got sitting in the vegetable box.

    Ginger Cake
    Ginger cake always goes down well in our house – it lasts ages, and goes very well with tea. Dan Lepard’s recipe in the Guardian a few weeks ago looks like a good one.

    Chips
    Jeffrey Steingarten’s article on the perfect French Fry in The Man Who Ate Everything includes a description of how to make chips at home following Joel Robuchon’s home method. The idea is apparently to put the cold cut-up potatoes into cold oil and heat the whole thing up together, thereby giving them the first cooler cooking followed by the hotter second frying, all in one go.