con­quer­ing kitchen demons

It is a truth uni­ver­sal­ly acknowl­edged that when a cer­tain type of per­son pos­sess­es a skill, he or she will look with con­tempt and scorn at anoth­er per­son who does not pos­sess that skill. And not just look, mind you, but express that con­tempt and scorn quite read­i­ly, with appar­ent blind­ness to the pos­si­bil­i­ty that there are things he or she is also not capa­ble of doing. This is such an unpleas­ant human qual­i­ty that I’m mak­ing it an ear­ly New Year’s Res­o­lu­tion nev­er to do it again, if I ever have.

The prob­lem with the con­tempt and scorn school for me is (aside from the basic one that it makes me feel bad) that it stops me doing things I don’t know how to do. I just crawl away into a safe dark place where I can car­ry on doing the things I already know how to do. And while that gen­er­al­ly works out all right, since I can do a fair num­ber of things, in my cur­rent mini-mid-life-cri­sis mode I don’t want ANY­THING stand­ing in the way of my get­ting some­thing I real­ly want.

As a result of all this analy­sis and a sud­den deci­sion to step up to the culi­nary plate, I resort­ed to the method that near­ly always solves a prob­lem for me: I found a friend. Yes­ter­day I wel­comed into my kitchen one Han­nah Goodyear, of The Kitchen Queen, to help me over­come some of my most per­sis­tent kitchen fears. You know we all have them. I know a lot of peo­ple who are scared sil­ly of a whole chick­en. These same peo­ple will hap­pi­ly cook the much more intim­i­dat­ing ver­sion of this, the Thanks­giv­ing or Christ­mas turkey, but would blanche and even faint at the notion of roast­ing a chick­en every Sun­day, for exam­ple. I know oth­er peo­ple who would nev­er con­sid­er gut­ting and fil­let­ing a whole fish. That would be me. For some rea­son, though, I feel no need to acquire this par­tic­u­lar kitchen skill, where­as I do have a secret desire to be a butcher.

My par­tic­u­lar kitchen ter­rors were, until yes­ter­day, three­fold: bread, fresh pas­ta and bak­ing. All three of these areas seemed to me to involve a cou­ple of areas in life where I am at my weak­est: sci­ence and math­e­mat­ics. I tend to avoid activ­i­ties that require more than a pass­ing acquain­tance with either of these sub­jects, and I was absolute­ly cer­tain that to bake a loaf of bread, make ravi­o­li or pro­duce a suc­cess­ful dessert, I would have to shake hands with not only sci­en­tif­ic rules, but also NUMBERS.

Now, in this I was cor­rect. But in my ambi­tious heart of hearts, I knew instinc­tive­ly that all I real­ly need­ed was a teacher. Until yes­ter­day, every­thing I ever knew about cook­ing I learned by myself, just slog­ging along imi­tat­ing oth­er peo­ple’s successes.

I speak from expe­ri­ence as a long­time teacher myself when I tell you that there are two sorts: the sort who rev­els in being smarter than oth­er peo­ple, and the sort who remem­bers very well not know­ing ANY­THING and just wants to help peo­ple out of their igno­rance. There is room for both sorts: it can be sur­pris­ing­ly moti­vat­ing, in a sick sort of way, to learn by fear and intim­i­da­tion. But that’s not the sort of per­son I want­ed in my kitchen. Hap­pi­ly for me, I got Han­nah. And so should you.

I found her in the way that peo­ple in the mod­ern world find every­thing: by googling. “Cook­ery lessons Lon­don,” got me to an array of cook­ery SCHOOLS. The trou­ble with an insti­tu­tion, how­ev­er, is that you have to do things their way. You have to sign up, for exam­ple, for “Bak­ing.” But I knew I did­n’t want to spend a day learn­ing to make bis­cot­ti or a choco­late cake. I want­ed to learn to make a tart. Or I could have had a day of “Pas­ta, Piz­za and Risot­to,” and while it would have been fun, I already know how to make piz­za and risot­to, and I knew I did­n’t want to learn to make spaghet­ti. I want­ed to repro­duce the glo­ri­ous­ly deca­dent ravi­o­lis I have been encoun­ter­ing at some of my Ladies Who Lunch adven­tures. Even the most lux­u­ri­ous ready-made ravi­o­lis on the com­mer­cial mar­ket fall short, I think, and have to be cov­ered in a gar­licky, creamy sauce and topped with fried sage to make them inter­est­ing. And by the time I’d done all that, I found, the whole point of ready-made food had been lost.

The beau­ty of Han­nah’s approach is that I got to tell her EXACT­LY what I want­ed to learn, and I got to learn in my very own kitchen. So a flur­ry of emails and phone calls lat­er, I had a mas­sive shop­ping list and a huge sense of purpose.

I felt as if I were wel­com­ing a blind date into my house! Only even more so: at least on a date you’re look­ing at three, four hours, max­i­mum. Han­nah and I cooked togeth­er for over sev­en hours yes­ter­day, and I can tell you that it was one of the best days of my life. I love noth­ing more than spend­ing a day cook­ing in any case, but to spend the day WITH some­one in the kitchen, and to know that as every hour passed I could do some­thing I could­n’t have done before was a tremen­dous thrill. And you know what: there’s noth­ing to any of those jobs that had scared me so. I just need­ed a help­ing hand.

We start­ed off at the deep end: mak­ing foc­ca­cia dough. Why was I so scared of a lit­tle knob of fresh yeast? I bought it two weeks ago, and every time I opened the fridge it stared at me from its plas­tic bag, mock­ing my fear. But with Han­nah here, I brave­ly put it on the scale (a scale in my kitchen! who would ever have thought), mixed it with sug­ar, and watched as it turned liq­uidy, just as Han­nah said it would. Like mag­ic. I mixed and knead­ed and shaped it and stuck it in an oiled bowl and that was that. Left in a warm oven to rise while we attacked pas­ta. A chal­lenge! I con­fess to being a cook who tends to use a uten­sil to mix messy things, but there was no tool to replace my own two hands, get­ting sticky with eggs and flour. I made a well in an enor­mous pile of flour on my gran­ite counter, plopped in the eggs, and watched as they ran away from me. “Just catch them with your hands and bring them back into the flour!” Han­nah laughed, and in no time there was a love­ly ball of pas­ta dough, to chill while we made sweet pas­try for the tart.

Tarts and I have had a stormy rela­tion­ship. The pas­try shrinks, the fill­ing does­n’t set, the fla­vors are dull, the whole pre­sen­ta­tion has a sort of Girl Scout rough-and-ready qual­i­ty to it. Not yes­ter­day! I learned to roll the pas­try out so it more than fills the tart pan, and we made a creme patissiere, a very thick cus­tard, to fill the case, and then VERY pre­cise­ly cov­ered the whole top with straw­ber­ries and rasp­ber­ries, and glazed it all with melt­ed apri­cot jam. So sim­ple and perfect.

The foc­ca­cia dough was turned out onto the counter and I punched it down and put it in spring­form pans to rise again, then we made dim­ples on the two loaves with our knuck­les, paint­ed the tops with olive oil, sprin­kled rose­mary and thyme and sea salt on them and baked them. Absolute­ly noth­ing to it. And as you see, they turned out just like a restau­rant. I could feel my doubts slip­ping away!

We made four deca­dent fill­ings, one of which turned out to be very bor­ing and so we did­n’t use it. It was a pump­kin base, and no mat­ter how much gar­lic, lemon juice, pep­per, pine nuts we added, it was just… dull. It tast­ed of all the things we added, but not of pump­kin, and it was­n’t pump­kin col­ored, as the ravi­o­li I had had at Peter­sham Nurs­eries had been. Any sug­ges­tions accept­ed. I hear from my men­tor Orlan­do, how­ev­er, that pump­kin fill­ing is tricky. Maybe the Lebanese pump­kin I start­ed out with was the wrong ingre­di­ent. I real­ly don’t know. But the lob­ster, crab and toma­to fill­ing was divine­ly rich, as was the saf­fron cream sauce to go with it. Then there was crab and chest­nut mush­room stuff­ing (John’s favorite), and final­ly Avery’s request­ed spinach, ricot­ta and pro­sciut­to mix­ture. With that I served a fried sage and but­ter sauce, and I can tell you right now, you can­not make enough fried sage leaves to make a din­ner par­ty hap­py. We invit­ed my friend Annie and her fam­i­ly to join in the delights, and oh! It was a delight.

Han­nah has all the right qual­i­ties to make her a plea­sure to spend sev­en straight messy hours with: she’s super speedy and effi­cient (the fastest wash­er-upper I have ever known), she’s flex­i­ble and unflap­pable, she’s seen it all twen­ty times and so is sur­prised by noth­ing, and she’s encour­ag­ing. She gets you down and dirty and asks all the time, “Would you rather be doing…” to make sure you’re get­ting the expe­ri­ence you want. She is also drop-dead gor­geous which does­n’t hurt when you spend the whole day with her. Best of all, she tru­ly enjoys bring­ing her charge up from igno­rant to capa­ble, and no ques­tion was too stu­pid for me to ask. And she stayed far beyond the time lim­it, to make sure I was real­ly ready to feed my guests. When she left, I felt a bit like a babysit­ter must when the par­ents leave: was I real­ly in charge?

The din­ner went off with­out a hitch. One caveat I would offer you about fresh pas­ta: make sure you don’t let it get too warm before you cook, because it will stick to what­ev­er sur­face you put it on. On the off chance that some­thing would­n’t be edi­ble, I had decid­ed to roast a cou­ple of chick­ens as a sup­ple­ment (we did­n’t even TOUCH them!), and as a result the kitchen was very toasty. Some of the lob­ster ravi­o­lis died a sad death on their grease­proof paper, no mat­ter how much flour I sprin­kled on to try to save them. But I was feel­ing so con­fi­dent by then that you know what I did? I sim­ply scooped the love­ly savoury fill­ing (ful­ly cooked) out of the sad dead pas­ta, and shook it up in my sal­ad dress­ing. And it was the best dress­ing ever, for crisp, strong rock­et, baby beet­root leaves and spinach. I am not nor­mal­ly very inclined to think out of the box, but it was love­ly to find lit­tle bites of crab, lob­ster and toma­to in that salad.

What a tri­umph! I am try­ing to think now if there are any oth­er fright­en­ing spec­tres lurk­ing in my kitchen cup­boards, mock­ing me with my incom­pe­tence. Because I have no doubt that Han­nah dis­pel them. Give her a call, do. What a great Christ­mas present, thank you, John.

Fresh Pas­ta

800 grams Type 00 (or pas­ta) flour
8 large free range eggs

Place the flour in a heap on a work sur­face and make a well in the cen­ter. Pour the eggs into the well (catch them when they run away!) and mix well until you have a ball of real­ly stiff dough, then knead it real­ly well. You want to end up with a nice silky, glossy, smooth ball of dough, quite firm. Be patient and scrape your hands off now and then and don’t wor­ry if you can’t incor­po­rate every scrap of flour. You will need to knead at least 10 min­utes. When fin­ished, wrap in cling­film and chill for at least half an hour in the fridge.

After the rest­ing peri­od, pinch off a piece about the size of three fin­gers, and feed it through your pas­ta machine first in the widest set­ting. Then fold it in half and con­tin­ue at the widest set­ting sev­er­al times, and then con­tin­u­ing through to the finest set­ting. Lay the pas­ta out on a floured sur­face and place an egg-yolk-sized spoon­ful of the fill­ing of your choice about 2 inch­es apart, then brush with egg white around the fill­ing to make the top lay­er of pas­ta stick. Then play anoth­er lay­er on the top and press all around the mound of fill­ing. Cut around the fill­ing leav­ing an inch or so of pas­ta all around. Drop into boil­ing water for no more than three min­utes and drain well.

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The Kitchen Queen’s Lob­ster, Crab and Toma­to Ravi­o­li with a Saf­fron Cream, Served with Pan-Fried Cour­gette and Leek Ribbons
(serves 8 as a starter)

enough fresh pas­ta for 16 large raviolis
2 medi­um lob­ster tails
1 tbsp butter
splash olive oil
100 grams white crab meat
2–3 tbsps toma­to puree
juice of 1/2 lemon
salt and pep­per to taste
pinch chilli powder
1 tsp fresh thyme, chopped
100 grams mas­car­pone cheese

Sauce and Topping

large pinch saffron
1 1/2 cups chick­en stock
1/2 cup dou­ble cream
2 cloves gar­lic, minced
salt and pep­per to taste
4 toma­toes, deseed­ed and fine­ly chopped
2 cour­gettes, made into rib­bons using a pota­to peeler
white part of 1 leek, julienned

Bring water to boil in a saucepan and cook the lob­ster tails until not quite ful­ly cooked, about 4–5 min­utes. Let cool and then shell and cut off the very end (about 2 inch­es) of the tail and set aside. Chop the remain­der of the lob­ster fair­ly fine and fry in the but­ter and olive oil until ful­ly cooked. Lift out of the skil­let and leave the skil­let to one side to fry the cour­gettes and leek in later.

In a mix­ing bowl, mix the crab, toma­to puree, lemon juice, salt and pep­per, chilli pow­der, thyme and mas­car­pone, then the cooled lob­ster. Taste and adjust sea­son­ings. Chill until ready to stuff the pas­ta. Cut the small ends of lob­ster tail into eight equal pieces and set aside.

For the sauce, mix the saf­fron with the chick­en stock in a saucepan, then add the cream, 1 clove of gar­lic, and salt and pep­per and sim­mer high until the sauce reach­es a nice thick con­sis­ten­cy. Set aside until near­ly ready to serve. Make the cour­gette rib­bons and leek juli­enne and saute them with the remain­ing clove of gar­lic in the skil­let you used for the lobster.

To serve, boil the ravi­o­li for no more than 3 min­utes and place two on each plate. Place the chopped toma­toes in the sauce and heat through, then pour the sauce over the ravi­o­li and top with a lit­tle cour­gette and leek. Final­ly top each plate with a bit of lob­ster tail and serve right away.

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The Kitchen Queen’s Rose­mary and Rock Salt Foccacia
(serves eight)

30 grams/1 ounce fresh yeast
1/2 tsp sugar
600 ml/1 pint 2 fl ounces warm water
4 tbsps olive oil, plus more for oil­ing bowl
680 grams/ 1 1/2 lbs strong white flour, plus more for dusting
2 tsps rock salt, plus 1 1/2 tsps for topping
leaves from 4 rose­mary sprigs

Mix the yeast with the sug­ar in a small bowl and stir until the yeast liq­uidizes. Stir in two thirds of the water and the olive oil. In a large bowl stir togeth­er the flour and salt. Pour the yeast mix­ture into the flour and salt and mix with a wood­en spoon to form a soft dough. Add more water if the dough is a bit dry (rather it be wet than dry).

Turn the dough out onto a light­ly floured sur­face and knead for ten min­utes until smooth and elas­tic (Han­nah does this by hold­ing onto the dough with one hand and then FIRM­LY push­ing half of it away with the oth­er, then turn­ing the dough 90 degrees and repeat­ing many times). Place the dough in an oiled bowl and put in a warm place (my 50-degree oven worked fine) under a damp teatow­el and rise till dou­bled in bulk, about 1 1/2 hours.

When the dough has risen, knead it again for about five min­utes on a clean floured sur­face to “knock it back.” Then shape the dough into two cir­cles and place them each in an oiled 9‑inch spring­form pan. Place in the warm spot and let rise again to twice their size (about 10–15 min­utes). Make 20 or so “dim­ples” in the dough with your knuck­les and brush gen­er­ous­ly with olive oil. Then sprin­kle with salt and press rose­mary leaves into them, then sprin­kle the rest of the rose­mary over the top.

Bake at 220/400 for ten min­utes, then low­er heat to 190/375 and bak­er for a fur­ther 20–30 min­utes until cooked through and gold­en brown on top. Remove spring­form and when bread is slight­ly cooled, remove to a cool­ing rack. The foc­ca­cia is best eat­en the day it’s made. Enjoy!

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The Kitchen Queen’s French Rasp­ber­ry Straw­ber­ry Tart
(serves eight)

For the Creme Patissiere:
2 tsps vanil­la extract
scraped-out seeds of 1 vanil­la pod
560 ml whole milk
50 grams plain flour
4 tsps cornflour
8 egg yolks
120 grams cast­er sugar

For the Sweet Pastry:
200 grams plain flour, plus extra for dusting
50 grams icing sugar
125 grams cold but­ter, cut into small cubes
1 large egg, beaten
tiny splash milk

Top­ping:
3 tbsps apri­cot jam
1 pun­net each rasp­ber­ries and strawberries

Whisk the egg yolks, vanil­la and sug­ar togeth­er, then add flour and corn­flour. Boil the milk and whisk it slow­ly into egg mix­ture. Pour the mix­ture into a clean pan and bring slow­ly to the boil, until it thick­ens (it gets very thick!). Sim­mer for anoth­er minute and then chill com­plete­ly, under a piece of cling­film to pre­vent a skin forming.

Mix the flour and icing sug­ar togeth­er in a big bowl. “Rub” the cut-up but­ter into this mix­ture, shak­ing the bowl occa­sion­al­ly to bring the lumps to the sur­face. If your hands are hot (mine always are), run them under a cold tap to keep you from melt­ing the but­ter. Mix until you achieve a tex­ture of bread­crumbs. (Han­nah says this can be done in the food proces­sor, but we did it the old-fash­ioned way so I’d know how.) Add the egg and splash of milk so that a dough forms. Wrap in cling­film and chill for an hour if possible.

Get your flan/tart tin. (Mine did not have a remov­able base, and it was fine, but one with such a base is prefer­able.) Roll out pas­try on a floured sur­face until it’s large enough to fit over the tin, up the sides and with some left over. Press the dough into the tin and up the sides, then trim to be even with the edge of the tin. Lay some grease­proof paper over the dough, then put a cou­ple of hands of rice, pas­ta, or bak­ing beans on top of the grease­proof- this helps stop the pas­try from ris­ing when we cook it, and is known as “bak­ing blind” (i.e. with noth­ing else in it).

Bake for 15–20 min­utes until pas­try is dry and bis­cuit-like (you don’t want a sog­gy bot­tom on your tart!). When the pas­try case has cooled, trans­fer it to a nice plate and fill it with the creme patissiere. Top with halved straw­ber­ries around the edge and fill the rest of the top with rasp­ber­ries, hole side down. Paint with the melt­ed apri­cot jam and enjoy!

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Thank you, Han­nah, for mak­ing my day so excit­ing and reward­ing, for not laugh­ing when I pan­icked and for answer­ing every ques­tion thor­ough­ly and nev­er giv­ing away when it was a sil­ly one, for the incred­i­bly pre­cise and read­able instruc­tions (left with me on lam­i­nat­ed, beau­ti­ful­ly dec­o­rat­ed recipe cards), for the Kitchen Queen apron and can­vas tote. But most­ly, thank you for your will­ing­ness to help me with my kitchen demons. I’m a hap­pi­er per­son for our time together.