Choose from young carrots radishes fennel celery hearts artichokes pull off and dip a leaf at a time red peppers button mushrooms
Posted in General on 30. Jul, 2010
Choose from young carrots, radishes, fennel, celery hearts, artichokes (pull off and dip a leaf at a time), red peppers, button mushrooms and anything else that takes your fancy, including cardoons. To follow, you can scramble the remains of the sauce with some eggs and eat it on crisp brown toast.
100ml/31/2 fl oz whitewine4 garlic cloves, peeledSalt75g/3oz unsalted butter75g/3oz salted anchovyfillets8 tbsp extra-virgin oliveoil3 tbsp double creamHeat the wine in a small saucepan and cook until it is well-reduced and syrupy. There again, most things taste nice dipped into bagna cauda, that warm, buttery anchovy slurry. I AM always bemused at the cultural differences that exist in the eating of crudites. Being squeamish about unrecognisable bits of offal and chickens’ feet is understandable, but less so is why as a nation we should turn our nose up at raw cardoons and artichokes, which the Italians delight in. In them you will find such delights as squid in sweet soy with sweet potato and bok choy, or ginger-marinated pork salad with green tea noodles, shiitake mushrooms and sesame.The recipes are clearly written and easy to follow, despite the fact that the measurements have fallen prey to “design”.Keen cooks will find much to engage them in its pages..
Earthier flavours predominate – roast baby aubergines with spiced yoghurt and mint, for example, or apple, almond and Stilton tart.Yet Peter Gordon is at his pan-Pacific best in the chapters he devotes to Barbecue Parties and Dinner Parties. I wish that my guests woke me to the smell of freshly baked muffins!Nevertheless, few other chefs would let themselves be photographed in their dressing gown – or admit to owning two tea trolleys.His affection for exotic ingredients remains – you’ll find recipes that need soba noodles, dried sea weed, green mangoes, spring roll wrappers, fish sauce and tamarind – but not as many recipes as in his first book.The recipes have also subtly changed. Written in the same chatty style as his first, you will be left in no doubt as to his Antipodean roots or the culinary prowess of his family and his friends. His chapters cover subjects like Breakfast, Picnics, Left Overs, and Canapes & Nibbles.Voila! A seductive, glossy second book and a happy agent.
True, if your first book is a roaring success – as was the case with Peter Gordon’s The Sugar Club Cookbook. After all, most chef-authors choose their favourite restaurant recipes for their first book.
Peter Gordon has cleverly decided to get round the problem by ostensibly selecting recipes from his domestic and private life. One favourite gem for food writers is that “the second book is the hardest to write”. LITERARY AGENTS are very fond of dropping pearls of wisdom to their authors. The Organic Store in Twickenham has a home-delivery service as well as running Organika.The Organic Store, 8 Staines Road, Twickenham (0181-241 9482).. However, as is still traditional at such post-gig shindigs, several cases of wine and lager, albeit organic, were included.