A Long and Messy Business. Rowley Leigh

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СКАЧАТЬ welcome relief after the pulled-back deadlines and

      frenetic pace of December, but January has its own

      problems. There are few fresh ingredients specific to

      the month. The wild game season is still going, just, but

      care is needed with what birds there are as they mature.

      Apart from apples and pears available from store,

      the only fruit are the citruses and the exotics. With

      vegetables, there are roots and brassicas aplenty, and

      Italy seems to produce a new member of the chicory

      family almost every year. There is plenty of fish, if the

      weather allows, and we live in an age where there is

      no shortage of meat at any time of the year.

      The other problem is that January is diet month.

      Half the population – or certainly that section of the

      population that might read the Financial Times – is

      on a ‘dry’ January and a ‘detox’ diet. I prefer to defer

      my attempts at detox until Lent, not for religious

      reasons but because it seems more seasonally

      appropriate. I do occasionally prescribe dishes

      that are suitable for those trying to clean up their act,

      but in the main I tread my usual path. While most

      food pages are full of wellbeing and health, I reward

      the remainder of the population who pine for more

      substantial victuals. Nobody needs spiralised

      courgettes in an English winter.

      You Need a Good Bouilli

      A Winter Broth

      To get a really good bouillon, you need a bouilli. The

      trouble is we don’t do bouilli anymore. Put your hand on

      your heart and tell me when you last ate a piece of boiled

      meat. No? I thought not. Unless it’s an egg, we just don’t

      do ‘boiled’ anymore. Vegetables are ‘blanched’ or steamed,

      meat is seared or ‘pan-roasted’ or, very occasionally,

      ‘poached’, and fish is much the same – although that is,

      perhaps, less surprising. Once I had found ‘boiled carp in

      grey sauce’ in a Polish cookbook, I knew I had reached

      the nadir of unappetising dishes. However, boiled meat

      is different: it’s just getting over that ‘boiled’ word.

      Boiling certain cuts of meat – usually dry, lean cuts

      such as silverside or brisket of beef – produces both a

      succulent piece of meat, the bouilli, and a beautiful,

      flavoursome broth, or bouillon. It is a win-win situation.

      You eat slices of the meat with some vegetables that have

      also been cooked in the broth and add a few punchy

      condiments such as mustard, horseradish, salsa verde,

      cornichons and other pickles and have a very good dinner.

      Later you come to the broth.

      I never agree that a good soup always has to have a

      good stock. There are many that don’t. In my view, the

      lovely freshness of a good minestrone should come from

      the flavour of the vegetables alone; no cream soup or purée

      needs a stock as that too would get in the way of the purity

      of flavour – be it watercress, cauliflower or whatever. But

      there are also soups that are truly meagre affairs when

      they do not have the support of a good broth.

      I make a lot of soups at home. Sometimes that is all

      one wants for supper. They are never posh soups, such as

      consommés or silky-smooth purées (I do not even possess

      a blender, not in working order at any rate), but simple

      soups, sometimes, although not always, stock based –

      usually beef or chicken, sometimes a mixture of the two

      – and fairly well packed with vegetables. The vegetables

      are always, I hope, judiciously chosen but there is often an

      element of tidying up the fridge involved, too: those last

      two carrots and that half head of cabbage ought to go

      somewhere, after all.

      15

      January

      A WINTER BROTH

      Serves eight to ten.

      FOR THE BOUILLON

      1kg (2lb 4oz) beef brisket

      1 onion, peeled, halved and

      studded with 6 cloves

      2 carrots, peeled and cut

      in half

      1 leek, cut in half

      4 sticks celery

      3 bay leaves

      a few sprigs of thyme

      FOR THE SOUP

      1 tablespoon olive oil

      3 onions, peeled and cut into

      5mm (1⁄4in) cubes

      3 leeks, cut into 5mm (1⁄4in)

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