#jane grigson

[cinemaocd]

Jane Grigson's Ratatoille

Make this to unlock a vegan super weapon for using up produce while it's in season. I made this last night and also spent $30 on four lamb chops which I cooked in the broiler accompanied by a really tasty mint/mustard/honey sauce but everyone still raved about the Ratatoille more and were like, "Oh the lamb chops are nice too"...:DDDD.

I tweaked Grigson's recipe and added a cup of red wine, a tsp of smoked paprika, some fresh oregano and parsley from the garden, broad beans which were going off and needed to be shelled and supplemented the canned tomatoes with a handful of cherry tomatoes from the garden, sliced in half, but not peeled or deseeded. No need to peel eggplant or zucchini, just soak them in cold water and scrub them to make sure you get all the dirt off the outside.

Olive oil 1 pound of zucchini sliced lengthwise into strips. 1 pound of Eggplant (or equiv smaller) sliced lengthwise into strips. 2 cups chopped onion, (red looks pretty in the dish) 2-3 bell peppers (any color) cut into strips 6 cloves of garlic, sliced (can use more or less, Grigson's recipe used less...:D) 1.5 cups skinned, seeded tomatoes (can use fresh or canned)

Place strips of zucchini and eggplant on a wire rack nested inside a cookie sheet. Salt lightly and let sit for up to two hours. Wipe dry with a paper towel. Meanwhile chop up the other veg, herbs and anything you have lying around from the garden that needs using up. I made a separate cucumber salad, but I probably could have treated them like the zucchini and salted them and sauteed them.

Start sweating the onions while the strips are drying on the rack. I placed them in a dutch oven with some salt, put the lid on and let them sweat on medium low for 15 minutes, gave them a stir and then let them sweat another 15. This is the KEY to getting that sweet, jammy flavor and fond that make this dish so tasty.

Add in the bell peppers, garlic and let them cook with the onions for 10 minutes before adding the tomatoes. Give everything a good stir. After the strips have been patted dry, cut them into 2-3 inch sections and add to the dutch oven. (You can leave them long, it looks very cool and colorful, but it does make the dish harder to eat and serve.) When everything is in, adjust salt, add some extra liquid (tomato juice or red wine, water, or vegetable stock, would all be fine) so that there is about 1/2 an inch of liquid in the bottom of the pot to keep things from sticking.

Stew veg for another 20-50 minutes with the lid on, stirring occasionally. Remove lid to reduce the liquid to a gravy-like consistency. Add fresh herbs and serve as a side with a grilled protein of your choice. Enjoy hot or cold. It gets better on day two, if you're lucky enough to have it still hanging around.

[deathandmushrooms]

American Golden Chanterelles - Cantharellus flavus

When all's said and written, there's nothing better than field mushrooms that you have gathered yourself, on toast, for breakfast.'

- Jane Grigson, The Mushroom Feast

Except maybe chanterelles you've gathered yourself on toast for breakfast. And since I only managed to find a few chanterelles (and I've been feeling poorly), I went for the reliable, comforting, and glorious mushroom + carbs + butter.

Ingredients: sourdough bread, butter, shallots, marsala, thyme, farmer's cheese, golden chanterelles, parsley, salt and pepper

[mariacallous]

Loss of the sense of taste must be one of the worst features of the British palate.

Jane Grigson

[jellobiafrasays]

the mushroom feast (1983 ed.)

[mariacallous]

When I once complained about the blandness of the average, mass-sale sausage, I was reminded that for maximum sales it must offend nobody at all. A prime recipe for nullity, since inevitably it will please nobody at all either.

Jane Grigson

[mariacallous]

In Florence years ago I learned how delicious cheese is with pears, a combination as popular there as apple tart is with cheese in Yorkshire. All kinds of cheese go with pears: Brie, cream  cheeses, Gorgonzola, Roquefort and Stilton, and some of the new semi-soft English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish cheeses. And so does black pepper; it was quite commonly used to bring out the flavour of fruit in the Middle Ages (and still is in some parts of France, where they make a peppered pear tart - or rather pie). This recipe, though, is a modern one, and was a specialty of Locket’s restaurant in London. For 4 8 small slices white bread 1 large bunch watercress, cleaned and divided into sprigs 4 ripe pears (Doyenné du Comice are best) 350 g (12 oz) Stilton cheese, sliced Freshly ground black pepper Toast the bread and cut off the crusts. Put the slices into four ovenproof dishes, or one large one. Arrange the watercress evenly on top and cover it with the peeled, cored and thinly sliced pears. Put the Stilton over the pears and slide into a mark 4, 175°C (350°F) oven for 5 to 10 minutes, until the cheese begins to melt and the pear release their aromatic flavours. Grind black pepper on top before serving.

Jane Grigson, giving a recipe for Locket’s savouries, in her English Food

[mariacallous]

We have long been cut off from the experience of food production. We have come to regard it with as little curiousity as if it were boot polish. I remember the situation during the last war, which became a coals-in-the-bath sort of cliché, when children evacuated from the big towns refused to drink milk because it came from those dirty cows rather than from a nice, clean tin. This always raises a laugh, but many people’s attitude towards food generally is precisely the same to-day - except that now it has to be wrapped in nice, clean plastic. And the production of food is becoming so sanitized, so sterile, that should we venture abroad, stomach troubles become inevitable. This always happens to American travellers - are we destined to suffer in the same way from our demand for foodless food? Is this over-urbanization the reason why we have not understood the demands we should have been making from the intensive farming of the last 40 years, and now find ourselves landed with quantity rather than quality, with boredom, repugnance and even, it now seems, with an increase in food poisoning and pollution? We have not controlled the farmers, our demands have not balanced their progress, and we have lost out. What butcher these days dares to sell brains, sweetbreads, spinal marrow, for fear of scrapie? We have not understood the impiety of feeding ruminant animals with the rehashed bodies of dead sheep: now we see an almost biblical judgement, in the matter of offal, and in the matter of eggs and poultry as well, from the appalling practice of feeding battery chicken on the recycled bodies of their dead fellows.

Jane Grigson

[mariacallous]

I suspect, from my reading, that mass circulation women’s magazines are directed by entirely populist points of view - that one should never suggest that one variety of a fruit will give you something better, because half their readers think they cannot afford it. In a country that spends the amount ours does on hard liquor, gambling, ice cream of a worthless kind, sweets, cakes, biscuits, this is nonsense. If people choose to spend it that way, fair enough. But let them not plead poverty as an excuse for bad food. And let people who provide the awful food not shrug off responsibility by saying, ‘Well, it’s what *they* want.’ This really is trahison des clercs. 'Let them have trash’ seems a far worse attitude than 'Let them eat brioche.’ The latter comes from a complete lack of understanding; the former comes from a conniving complicity in lower standards by people who would not accept them for themselves and their families at home. To provide worthless things, or things that are worse than they should be, shows what you think of your fellow human beings.

Jane Grigson