Irish stew

Stew. A four letter word that spells happiness. Fulfillment. Comfort. A release from anxiety.

It can mean love. A mother's, a wife's, a husband's, a friend's. If you are fed a good stew you have been welcomed home.

Of course, stew can also spell disaster, disappointment and dishwater. Easily avoidable.

Stews: a South African waterblommetjie or green bean bredie, French boeuf bourgignon, coq au vin (and bouillabaisse, for that matter). Hungarian chicken paprikash...The list is mouthwateringly endless. Every culture has a slow-cooked, moist dish of meat and vegetables. Each draws ingredients from its points of evolution.

Purists maintain that Irish stew should contain no more than meat, potatoes and onions. Which is fine. Others add root vegetables. I am an Other, and we are still on the cusp of root vegetable season. I also use lamb that is still on the bone: shoulder chops are economical, have good seams of fat and the bones do wonderful things for the broth. Good stew is all about the broth. Serve it with a spoon.

I add a little, just a little, Guinness. First I added a lot and the result was just a bitter disaster. I mean, I don't like drinking it so why did I try and cook with it? In a word: pressure. And then, in the spirit of Guinness and Black (a drink surely invented to make the hard core beer more palatable), I added a dollop of black currant syrup - look for Ribena, or use Crème de Cassis. Success. But use a paler beer if you like. Hardly anyone in Ireland actually drinks Guinness...

Another thing. There IS no modern culinary herb native to Ireland. Unless something grows in the hedgerows of which I am unaware. I need to forage in Ireland. So I add no herbs. At first this induced some panic, because herbs, well, they flow in my blood. But it will be OK. I promise.

For the last hour I finish the stew in the oven (I see eyebrows rising) after stirring in a little flour and butter paste (beurre manié)...Caramelizing, thickening, all good things in the land of stew.

So.

Irish Stew for Four:

2 Tbps butter. This is no place for olive oil.
4 lamb shoulder chops, cut quite thick, fat intact, seasoned with salt and pepper
1 large onion, cut into 1/8ths
2 large, mature carrots (yes, they are sweeter), peeled and cut into even batons
2 medium turnips, peeled and quartered
1 cup Guinness
1/4 tsp salt
3 Tbsps black currant cordial or Crème de Cassis
3 medium potatoes, peeled and quartered
2 medium parsnips, peeled and cut down the middle
1 Tbsp butter plus 2 tsp flour, mashed to a paste
Salt, pepper

In a heavy bottomed pot (with a lid for later), melt the butter and add the seasoned lamb chops (whole) when it sizzles. Brown on each side, and don't overcrowd the pan. The browning starts the long process of flavour-building. Remove chops and add onions, cooking over medium high heat but never scorching. Be patient here, about five minutes to take on some colour at the edges. Remove the onions, return meat to the pan, pile onions back on top, and add carrots and turnips. Pour in the Guinness and black currant cordial, stir to scrape up the bits stuck to the bottom and add enough water to barely cover the top layer of vegetables. Add the quarter teaspoon of salt. Turn the heat up to bring this all to a boil and when it does immediately lower to a simmer and cook, covered, with a whisper of steam allowed to escape, for an hour.

After an hour add the potatoes and parsnips (earlier and they can turn to mush). Check the liquid level - add water to cover them if necessary. Cook another 30 minutes on top of the stove, covered. Stir in the butter and flour paste.

Heat the oven to 375'F/190'C.

Pop the pot, with lid, into the oven and cook another hour and a quarter.

When the pot comes out, the sides will have browned with concentrated juice. With a wooden spoon wet the sides with the broth in the pot and scrape them down as much as possible. Taste the juice. If necessary, add a little salt.

Have warm bowls ready for serving the stew. I like to spoon it over a pile of wheat berries or barley - their texture is a firm foil for the falling-apart meat and soft vegetables and they suck up the delicious juice.

Or just dunk hunks of warm soda bread into the gravy. You won't be sorry.

Crumble

Why it took me till this January in Cape Town to bake a crumble for the first time, I don't know. I had been reading through my mother's collection of Nigel Slater books - why he is not better known in the States is beyond me. He is one of the best and most prolific food writers out there at the moment. His books are beautiful.

What appeals to me in a crumble is that it's all about fruit. I am a fruit bat. Fruit, flour, butter, sugar. That's it. After several crumbles - apricot, plum, blackberry - I eventually added an egg yolk to the crumbly topping, as it makes it more crisp; it needed a little edge of texture.

Choose your fruit. Plums are excellent, as are any stone fruit. Berries? Blackberries, blueberries, yes, but raspberries would disintegrate too much. Cape gooseberries (ground cherries in the US), are one of the best fillings. Cold-season apples and pears, yes, if you stew them gently for 5 minutes, first.  Guavas, if you can get them and don't mind the seeds (I don't).You need about 40 minutes in the oven - long enough for the juices to ooze out and begin to edge over the pastry. So it's a perfect dessert to pop in the oven while you're eating dinner.

Variations? Grate some lemon zest into the topping (good with blueberries), slosh some Calvados over your apples. Slivovitz over your plums.

You need for the topping:

175 grams/ 6 oz butter
175 grams/6 oz flour
100 grams/3.5 oz sugar
pinch of salt
1 egg yolk

Whizz the butter, flour, sugar and salt in food processor till crumbly. Add the yolk and whizz briefly. The texture of the raw pastry should be somewhere between freshly tilled soil and miniature beach pebbles. If you don't have a food processor (and I don't, but was in my mother's kitchen) rub the butter into the flour as you would for scones, then stir the egg yolk in, mixing lightly with a fork.

Filling:

Enough fruit to fill a baking dish. Pretty flexible, but I average about 4 cups. No need to peel plums, but apple and pears are best peeled. Peel guavas. Cut large fruit into bite-sizes for even cooking.

Toss the fruit with about 3 Tbps of sugar - this helps the fruity, syrupy juice to accumulate. Add more for tart blackberries, less for sweet plums. A squeeze of lemon gives an extra degree of caramelization.

Pour the sugared  fruit into your baking dish. Crumble the raw pastry over the top, mixing fine and craggy crumbles for an uneven texture. The odd hole is fine for juice-oozing. Bake at 350'F/180'C for 30-40 minutes until the pastry is golden, the juice bubbling and the kitchen is smelling fruitily irresistible.

Serve with thick cream, strained yogurt, custard or...nothing.

Potato chips at home

Sometimes, this should be lunch. Once a year, maybe.

They don't have to be blue. But if you are sharing them with someone you know very well, or with someone you don't know at all, it gives you something to talk about.

Slice the potatoes thinly. Rinse in water and pat dry. Very dry, or there'll be oil spatters, later.

Heat a lot of vegetable oil in a wide-mouthed pot. You need a depth of at least 4". That's why I can't make this too often. All that oil, and what to do with it afterwards? When the oil is making interesting swirling patterns from the heat, drop a sliced potato in it to see what happens. Little bubbles should start to fizz at its edges when it is hot enough. If they do, add a handful of potatoes to make a single layer, and cook them, turning once or twice with a slotted spoon, until very pale brown. Lift them from the oil, drip as much as you can back into the pot, and drain on paper towels. Repeat until all the potatoes have been cooked.

If you want them super-crispy and souffled, return the cooked potatoes to the hot oil, and cooked till puffed. Drain again and salt, or:

Toss a mixture of finely grated lemon or lime zest, salt and garlic over the hot chips. At a restaurant called Cafe Lebowitz, which existed on Spring Street in Nolita for about two minutes, years ago, they did this with the French fries.

Eat with a green, peppery-leafed salad in a sharp, mustardy dressing and drink cold red wine.

Herb roasted summer chickens

(For Peter, who asked.)

For a party Cornish hens or baby chickens are a treat. Sorry, chickens. It's no treat for you, I know.

Here, they have been cut down the middle before roasting. One chicken is usually too much for one person, when a lot of other dishes have already been eaten and will follow. Cutting them before roasting also browns the cut side nicely, and avoids last-minute butchering at table. These were our Tweede Nuwe Jaar chickens.

There are a milllion simple ways to make a chicken delicious. This is just one. No quantities, but heavy on the herbs, steady on the preserved lemon.

Figure on half a chicken per person, unless that is all you're eating. Then you're allowed a whole one each.
Herbs: parsley, summer savory, rosemary, thyme, chives - all finely chopped and mixed.
Preserved lemon, rind only, after rinsing the salt off (substitute lemon zest, but it's a whole other animal). Cut the rind into very small pieces.
Mascarpone cream cheese
Salt and pepper
Lemon juice
Verjus/verjuice (subs. fruity white wine)

Mix all the ingredients in  a bowl so that you have a thick paste, full of herbs.

After rinsing and patting the chickens dry, cut them in half lengthways. Loosen the skin and stuff about a tablespoonful of the herb mixture under the breast skin and spread evenly with your fingers. Spread some extra herb mixture over the top of the birds, as well as underneath.

Once all the chickens have been massaged thus, lay them in a roasting dish on some rosemary branches. Squeeze the juice of a lemon over them. Season with salt and pepper. Pour over about a cup of verjus.

Roast in a hot oven (200'C/400'F) until thoroughly delicious-smelling and brown: About an hour. Add verjus if the pan threatens to dry. If you listen to it the sound will tell you when that happens.

Remove birds to a serving plate. Deglaze the roasting pan with enough verjus to make good pan gravy. Add a slosh of cream or stir in the extra herb mixture if you have any left over. Reduce by about a third to concentrate the flavour, and pour over the chickens on the plate that will go to the table. I usually serve them at room temperature after roasting.

Some bread is nice to mop up the juice.

Chocolate roll with fresh cherries

Ever since I saw a luscious photograph of a chocolate roulade in the Halfaampieskraal cookbook, given to me for Christmas by Guy and Jay, and published by Human and Rousseau, my mouth has watered.

I made it to take to my cousin's for dessert after a braai, and have subsequently tweaked quantities, taken out an egg yolk, added milk and a little flour: The original, while deliciously chocolatey and easily rollable, was too eggy for my taste. Like a rolled chocolate omelette. I also chopped the suggested baking time by almost half, or it would have turned to cinders. But that may be the oven's fault.

I added cherries, for a fresh red counterpoint to the whipped cream and a Black Forest feel. Oh, the memory of that cake on Leisure Island long, long ago, that little hibiscus-hedged garden restaurant now under a block of flats. The death of Knysna.

This is surprisingly easy and low-stress to make, though they should perhaps also have explained better how to roll it. If you've never made one before, their directions are a little scant. It remains a beautiful book, though, and inspiring, which is what the best cookbooks should be.

6 eggs
4 Tbsp castor sugar, plus 2 Tbsp
5 Tbsp cocoa powder
1Tbsp flour
3 Tbsp milk
1 cup stoned and halved fresh cherries (raspberries would be good, too)
250 ml whipping cream
1 Tbsp castor sugar

Heat oven to 180'C/350F.

Butter baking tray (Swiss roll tray, jelly roll tray -  with low sides) and line with parchment paper, also lightly buttered. The paper must come up the sides.

Separate the eggs. Whip 5 of the yolks with 4 Tbsp of castor sugar till pale. Give the 6th yolk to the dog or put it on your steak tartare. Add the cocoa powder, flour and milk.

Whip the whites till softly fluffy and add the 2 Tbsp sugar; whip some more till mounded.

Take 1/4 of the whipped whites and cut them into the cocoa mixture with a spatula, folding and turning to break up the more solid mixture. Add the rest in 1/4 increments, blending well but gently. You need those bubbles.

Pour into the baking tray, spreading to touch all sides, and pop in the oven. Bake for 11 minutes and then check on it. If the middle has ceased to jiggle and a soft prod finds firm cake, remove. If the centre is still tender, give it another 3 minutes.

Remove, and cool in tray.

Whip the cream with 1 Tbsp castor sugar, till stiff.

Take a clean dishcloth and dampen it slightly. Loosen the edges of the parchment from the tray with a blunt knife. Cover the tray with the dishcloth, and flip over to tip out the cake. Remove the tray. The cake is now on the dishcloth. Peel the parchment paper carefully from the cake. Spread cream and scatter the cherries. From one end, use the dishcloth to lift and start rolling the cake. Once it is in a log shape transfer to a flat dish and keep cool till you need it.

Yes you can!

Braaied lamb chops with verjus

Everyone makes a braai their own way. Usually there is lamb, and boerewors, or ribs, or toasted sandwiches (braaibroodjies). There may be steak, or thick rashers of pork belly. But one thing is sacred and not to be messed with: no gas allowed. It's real fire, made with real wood or real charcoal.

Here at No. 9 we used to braai in a built-in braavleis place, made from bricks and mortar, with a grid that could be lowered or raised on three different levels. But that area now houses my mother's extensive succulent collection and a tickey creeper (Ficus pumila) grows over the braai itself. While there is a big ugly Weber braai on wheels, it is seldom used, unless there are hordes which need feeding. Braaing mostly happens on this little braai (you see how many ways you can use the word "braai"?). We call it the Mickey Mouse braai, because of its diminutive size. But it packs a punch.

Rib chops are the kind with the long stem, or rib bone. Loin chops have tender lamb loin on side, like a T-bone. We had loin chops for this. I eat very little lamb in the States because it is so very expensive. So South African time is lamb chop time. You can't shop in any supermarket without finding heaps of them.

Variations are endless - lemon juice instead of verjus. Branches of rosemary or thick lemon slices under the chops as you cook them. Oregano chopped into the marinade. Yogurt painted onto each chop. A marinade of onion, chutney, lime leaf, curry powder and milk, all whizzed up together and slathered over the meat for 24 hours.

But this is a simple version:

Enough lamb chops (at least 3 per person)
1/4 cup verjus
Red Turkish pepper
Salt and pepper

An hour before cooking them, season your chops and sprinkle them with verjus.

Make a fire: newspaper balls and dry wood. When the flames leap, cover them with natural charcoal. Stand back, or close your eyes, close the house's windows, go inside - this gets smoky. When the coals have started to glow after about 15 minutes you can come back out again and look at them for a long time. It's nice if you have a drink while you do this. You may adjust a coal now and then. But wait for a layer of fine grey ash to form over them and only then even your coal pile out. Put the wire grid over them, about 4" above the top layer. Add your chops.

If the chops are fatty there will be a conflagration. Don't panic. Allow the flames to burn for a few seconds before removing the affected chops - in danger of incineration - to a cooler spot. Put them back once the fat on the grid has burned off. You may have to keep moving the meat from spot to spot if the flames continue - it could be a sign that your fire was still too hot, at least it is with me. Impatient. But bargain on about four minutes to a side.

When each chop is brown on both sides it's ready to come off. We are not looking for rare chops, as we are usually not dealing, in South Africa, at least, with lamb that has been aged - so it is tougher. The best chop is a tiny notch below medium. I know this sounds wrong, but trust me. If you are braaing well-aged chops, give them the finger poke to assess doneness, and do not over cook them.

When cooked, put your chops in dishes with lids and let them rest for five minutes to relax a little. They exude delicious juice which is best mopped up with some garlic bread, or, if you must, simply boiled and sliced open potatoes.

Pizza at home

I now like this pizza about as much as I do a pie baked in a professional oven anywhere in Brooklyn. So there.

For us, pizza at home tends to be a cold weather thing. While every variation is possible in summer, with fresh herbs and just-picked tomatoes featuring, our apartment is tiny, and hot. And in summer, it is tinier, and hotter. Crank an oven up to 500'F and we begin to have dark, murderous thoughts of an August evening. So when the afternoons darken and the air nips, pies are made.

Pizza Dough - this is based on Patricia Wells' all purpose dough and bread recipe in Bistro Cooking. A book I would save in a flood (not so her Salad as a Meal, which is a case of false advertising...).

1 cup warm water
1 Tbsp instant yeast
2 tsp sugar
3 cups flour
1 tsp salt

Stir the sugar and yeast into the warm water and stand until the yeast has frothed into bubbles. A few minutes.

In a large bowl mix the yeasty water, flour and salt with a wooden spoon until amalgamated but no longer wet. Add a little more flour if it is too sticky. More warm water if too dry. All flours are different. Turn the mass of dough onto a floured board and knead it, folding the edge farthest from you over onto itself towards you, giving it a quarter clockwise turn every time. Knead until the dough turns silky-soft and elastic. At least five minutes. Turn it into a lightly greased bowl, cover with a damp, clean kitchen towel, and let it rise until doubled in size. It will take between 45 minutes and an hour-and-a-half.

I do not have a pizza stone, so I press the dough directly onto a perforated circular baking tray.

Remove dough from bowl. Punch it down to deflate, always keeping a roughly uniform circle. Lay it on the baking tray and with your knuckles press it outwards from the center, radiating towards the edges, turning the tray as you go. I do this methodically until the dough has reached the edge of the tray, with enough left for a slightly raised crust - this keeps sauce and melted cheese from escaping. The pressed dough base can rest like this for a good fifteen minutes.

Basic Pie:

Tomato sauce.

Generally I prefer canned or bottled tomatoes for a red sauce base. Their flavour is more intense.

1 Tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, very thinly sliced
1 can of organic, skinned tomatoes. I have sometimes even used pureed tomatoes.

In a saucepan saute the garlic till translucent. On no account allow it to brown, as it turns bitter.

Add the tomatoes, which you have chopped finely, or the puree. Cook gently, with a small bubble, until reduced by a third, taste for acidity, and perhaps add a teaspoon of sugar. I rarely add salt.

Cheese.

I have used every kind of cheese for pizza and return always to buffalo mozzarella. It dissolves into a beautiful creaminess with no hint of rubber when it cools a little. Slice it, not too thinly, not to thickly, and let it drain for a minute or two.

Topping. Up to you. But resist the urge to overdo it.

My standard topping after the sauce and cheese is little pieces of anchovy, cured in oil and salt. If I use sausage I slice and pan-cook it a little first, or turn it out of its casings and make little meatballs (above), cooking them just till they take some colour, before adding them.

So. Once your dough is pressed out and your oven is BLAZING hot. I can't stress that enough - as high as it can go: spread your sauce evenly and judiciously across the pizza base. You don't want Lake Tomato.  You want a wash. It's OK if pale parts of the dough show through in places. Too much sauce = soggy base. Once the sauce is spread, lay slices of mozzarella evenly across the top, avoiding any mozzarella deserts. You want an even melting.

Now scatter the anchovies. 5 fillets cut into small pieces are about perfect.

Put it in the hot oven, and bake until the dough at the edges is risen and is browning. The baking time varies but the rule of thumb is about 12 minutes in my oven.

Slide it out, loosen with a long spatula between crust and tray, and if you can, slide the pie onto a big cutting board. Cut into wedges and eat, and don't burn your tongue.

So that is standard pizza. Variations on the theme for me, include a mushroom pizza, which I make with a white sauce base, and the now ubiquitous but no less delicous fresh salad leaf and prosciutto/spek topping (above).

Stay tuned for those.