bak­ing blind (and other cook­ing adventures)

Well, it’s not gor­geous. It’s not flaw­less. But it’s a pas­try shell, it smells gor­geous, and I never thought I’d see one of those com­ing out of my oven. It is from a recipe by my Totleigh tutor Tamasin Day-Lewis from her Tamasin’s Kitchen Clas­sics, and the proof of the tart will be in the eat­ing, as they say. I am no baker, but my food writ­ing week made me ashamed of how I indulge this weak­ness. Avery and I approached the var­i­ous unfa­mil­iar things like vanilla pods, icing sugar and tart pan with trep­i­da­tion, and I must say she went off to the sta­ble for her after­noon ride quite cov­ered with rasp­berry seeds, up and down her wrists. I only saw it in the bus, and then it was too late to scrape her off. We really made a mess. And blind bak­ing? What the hell is that? I put the pas­try in the oven only to have Avery say dif­fi­dently, “Uh, Mummy, why is she say­ing to remove the foil and beans? What foil and beans?” Oh dear.

I had to google blind bak­ing. Pathetic. Serves me right for not read­ing the recipe all the way through before I began.

Last night may have been our best din­ner ever: two dishes I would be very grate­ful to have, and pay for, in a restau­rant. Two dishes from my dear tutor, Orlando Mur­rin, from his very touch­ing and also very use­ful cook­book, A Table in the Tarn: Liv­ing, Eat­ing and Cook­ing in South-West France. I am always slightly ner­vous cook­ing some­thing for the first time, and a bit taken aback to see how messy my kitchen gets when I’m not famil­iar with what I’m doing. Uten­sils every­where! With prac­tice, I will get these two recipes down with ease, because they’re not dif­fi­cult, they’re just unfa­mil­iar. I’d hap­pily eat each of them every night for a month, but I don’t think my cho­les­terol level could take it. Avery always orders her steak with no sauce what­ever, so I was a bit nervy on that account as well, but she was intrigued enough by eat­ing some­thing invented by the great teacher she’s heard so much about that she came bravely to the table.

As frus­trat­ing as it is for this Amer­i­can to try to cook with Euro­pean instruc­tions, I am going to repro­duce this recipe exactly as Orlando has writ­ten it, and let my read­ers deal with con­ver­sions. I myself was not tor­tured by pre­ci­sion because it was not bak­ing. Just be relaxed and know that the result will be worth the effort.

Orlando’s Steak St Juery
(serves 6)

50g unsalted but­ter, soft­ened, plus 10g extra
50g Roque­fort cheese (we sub­sti­tuted Welsh goats cheese, bril­liant)
1 shal­lot, chopped finely
3 tbsp Marsala or port (we used Marsala)
150ml beef or chicken stock (we used chicken)
2 tbsp creme fraiche
6 fil­let steaks
a lit­tle olive oil and but­ter
hand­ful of chopped toasted wal­nuts, flaked almonds and pinenuts (I had no wal­nuts)
chopped parsley

Mash the but­ter and cheese till smooth, or if you pre­fer, put in a small plas­tic bag and knead together through the plas­tic. Shape or press into 4 or 5 pieces, and refrigerate.

In the remain­ing but­ter in a small pan, fry the shal­lot for 3–4 min­utes till trans­par­ent but not brown. Add the Marsala and reduce to a syrup, then the stock and reduce again to a syrupy con­sis­tency — it should be about 3 tbsp, bub­bling with small tight bub­bles. Set aside, still in the pan, and cover.

Sea­son the steaks and fry for about 3 min­utes per side in the oil and butter

Set aside to rest while you fin­ished the sauce by bring­ing the reduced juices to the boil, then low­er­ing the heat so the sauce stays warm but does not boil. Whisk in the butter-cheese mix­ture piece by piece to make a thick­ish, glossy sauce. Whisk in the creme fraiche.

Slice each steak on the diag­o­nal into 3 thick slices and pour over the sauce. Sprin­kle with the nuts and pars­ley and serve at once.

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And that’s it. I was dis­or­ga­nized and let one reduc­tion burn, and another sep­a­rate into part oil, part some­thing else. You must pay atten­tion! But the third time was the charm. I am not used to mak­ing sauces and it takes con­cen­tra­tion. But this dish was sim­ply SUPERB. Lux­u­ri­ous, unusual, and it left the house smelling like a real French restau­rant. I was incred­i­bly pleased, and Avery pro­nounced the steak “insanely good.” But that was not all.

Orlando’s Straw Potato Cakes
(serves six, he says, but we two ate them ALL)

2 medium pota­toes, shred­ded into tiny match­sticks, using a man­dolin or juli­enne slicer
1 shal­lot, chopped very finely
duck or goose fat, olive oil or clar­i­fied butter.

Because [Orlando says] there is only me in the kitchen cook­ing din­ner, dishes have to be prac­ti­cal and achiev­able. This potato dish is so quick that it can be made while the meat rests. A few hours in advance you can peel the pota­toes and juli­enne them; keep them under water.

When ready to cook, drain the pota­toes thor­oughly and squeeze as dry as you can on a towel — twist­ing and wring­ing as much as pos­si­ble. Mix with the shal­lots and plenty of seasoning.

Heat 2 tbsp fat in a large fry­ing pan and put in 3 hand­fuls of potato, shap­ing as rough cir­cles. Mod­er­ate the heat if nec­es­sary, but after 3–4 min­utes they should have started to stick together and the under­side to go brown. Flip them over using a palette knife or spat­ula and cook the other side the same way. They will not be very tidy or reg­u­lar but they will taste delicious.

Keep warm on a bak­ing sheet and repeat with the next 3, adding a lit­tle more fat to cook in if nec­es­sary (usu­ally it isn’t). Serve as soon as possible.

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I chor­tled a lit­tle over his use of the dreaded, for­bid­den word “deli­cious,” (Tamasin uses it as well in her rasp­berry curd tart that Avery and I are work­ing on today, chuckle). It’s just a nice word.

These potato cakes are wickedly, sin­fully, melt-in-your-mouth salty indul­gence. And because I am obsessive-compulsive I didn’t even use a tool to make my match­sticks. So sat­is­fy­ing to slice the potato thinly, then take off the very edge away so you have a flat sur­face, and stack up the slices. Then you can slice them thinly again and slice the whole stack in two and voila: match­sticks. Now, I found that I wanted to fry these cakes a lit­tle longer than I expected, so be flexible.

Well, we were in heaven. Between mouth­fuls I said, “Aren’t I clever,” and Avery would chew for awhile and say, “You are so clever,” then we both had to take a deep breath and say, “Actu­ally, Orlando is very clever.”

I deserved a really rich din­ner because I had a ten­nis les­son in the after­noon: not just A ten­nis les­son, but a real pound­ing by my new instruc­tor, Rocco, a metic­u­lously groomed Brazil­ian man of intense ath­letic abil­ity. It must be said that he has, as well, an end­less sup­ply of off-colour sto­ries to shout at me as I’m try­ing to lift my toe, or have decent follow-through, or any­thing else to do with actual ten­nis. My God, he’s strange. But then he would turn from these rev­e­la­tions to ask Avery what the title of her book was, and where did she go to school. The man sim­ply appears to have no con­ver­sa­tional gov­er­nor! And since I could see I was improv­ing my game by leaps and bounds, so I sup­pose my moral sanc­tity can take a lit­tle drub­bing. But his cologne, good lord, the man must bathe in it, and it trans­ferred itself inex­orably via his help­ing hand on my rac­quet han­dle, and thence to my hand, where it remained indeli­bly through sev­eral hand wash­ings. I reported this to John who said from some 3000 miles away, “As your hus­band, I so did not want to hear that.”

It was a glo­ri­ous day of blue sky over­head, falling orange and yel­low leaves, a crisp breeze to keep me cool as I fended off my instruc­tor. Tonight is swim­ming and div­ing, in the mar­vel­lously old-fashioned school pool, glass-roofed and elegant.

And tomor­row, after nearly a week away, my beloved returns. And the three of us head off in the Mini, packed to the gills and with a dish of mac­a­roni and cheese at my feet, for a long week­end at the Gothic Tem­ple. As you know, we’re devoted to the Land­mark Trust and this is a place we’ve been eye­ing for many years, so it’s going to be an adven­ture. We all need some time as a three­some to regroup; it’s a funny dynamic being alone with a very com­pan­ion­able child for many days in a row. We get into our own con­ver­sa­tional groove that then has to adjust when Father Comes Home. He’s going to need all the peace he can get, after a dread­ful busi­ness week in blis­ter­ing sun and urban squalor. Poor man.

Before I close, I want to rec­om­mend to you a new blog, Roast Pork and Apple Snow, a new ven­ture writ­ten by my Totleigh Bar­ton com­pa­triot Edward. It’s a lovely com­bi­na­tion of sea­sonal appre­ci­a­tion, recipes and Edward’s mus­ings on food, cook­ing and the exam­ined life. You’ll love it. We are all absurdly moti­vated and ambi­tious for our writ­ing, after our week of inten­sive boot camp in Devon.

Well, the tart’s ready to be assem­bled, so fin­gers crossed. I’ll report results, if they’re fit to print. I have faith in Tamasin, just not so much in… me.