BASIC
SAUCE
SOUP
EGG
FISH
MEAT
OFFAL
VEG
RICE, PASTA, ETC.
CHEESE
DESSERT
DRINK
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
BOOKS REFERRED TO
INDEX
SUPPORTERS
DEDICATION
COPYRIGHT
Jonathan Meades is a writer, journalist, essayist, and film-maker. He is the author of Filthy English, Peter Knows What Dick Likes, Pompey, The Fowler Family Business, Incest and Morris Dancing, Museum Without Walls, An Encyclopaedia of Myself. From 1986–2001 he wrote a weekly column approximately about restaurants in The Times.
He has written and performed in many television films, among them Jerry Building, Joe Building, Ben Building, Magnetic North, Off Kilter, The Joy of Essex, Father To The Man and Meades Eats, a three-part series about what the English really consume.
Unbound published Pidgin Snaps, a boxette of a hundred of his photos in postcard form. In the spring of 2016 his exhibition Ape Forgets Medication comprised thirty artknacks and treyfs. The Plagiarist in the Kitchen is the only cookbook he will ever write.
PRAISE FOR JONATHAN MEADES
‘Meades has been compared, favourably, to Rabelais and, flatteringly, to Swift. The truth is that he outstrips both in the gaudiness of his imagination’ Henry Hitchings, Times Literary Supplement
‘Meades is a very great prose stylist, with a dandy’s delight in the sound and feel of words, and we are lucky to have him’ Ian Thomson, Spectator
‘Richly entertaining, invigorating and provoking; the fearless Meades is to non-fiction what Michel Houellebecq is to the good-taste mongers and mutual masturbators of the fiction scene’ Tim Richardson, Literary Review
‘A marriage of Borges, Betjeman and Bronowski’ Paul Lay, History Today
‘Lively, inventive and pugnacious . . . in an English literary tradition that, sweeping up Ian Nairn, John Betjeman and Charles Dickens along the way, takes us back to William Cobbett’s Rural Rides’ Jonathan Glancey, Architectural Review
‘Meades is fast, splenetic and brilliant’ Andrew Billen, The Times
‘Provocative, opinionated, allusive, variously heretical and revisionist’ Martin Hoyle, Financial Times
‘Meades is brainy, scabrous, mischievous and a bugger to pigeonhole: a fizzing anomaly’ Tim Teeman, The Times
‘As somebody said of Nietzsche (and I doubt if Meades would object to the grandiose comparison) the lack of system is a sign of generosity of mind’ Rowan Moore, Observer
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Filthy English
Peter Knows What Dick Likes
Pompey
Incest and Morris Dancing
The Fowler Family Business
Museum Without Walls
Pidgin Snaps
An Encyclopaedia of Myself
Dear Reader,
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ALL SNAPS IN THIS BOOK ARE BY THE AUTHOR
The Plagiarist in the Kitchen is an anti-cookbook, a recipe book that is also an explicit paean to the avoidance of culinary originality (should such a thing exist), to the daylight robbery of recipes, to hijacking techniques and methods, to the notion that in the kitchen there is nothing new and nor can there be anything new. It’s all theft. Anyone who claims to have ‘invented’ a dish is dishonest or delusional or foaming. The very title was lifted, without permission and with the gracelessness that infects Cooking World, from Julian Barnes’ The Pedant in the Kitchen (plenty more to rip off there). Informed of this larcenous book’s imminence Barnes prudently and no doubt correctly elected to consider it an act of homage.
Letting on where the title came from and fessing up to the book’s dogged thievery promotes a collision.
Were it a work of genuine plagiarism I would not have admitted it. I’d have covered my tracks – unlike the thief who returns to the scene of the crime. I’d have called it something different and altered recipes, using, for instance, mackerel instead of crème anglaise and substituting glacé fruits for sweetbreads.
Were it a work of genuine plagiarism I would, in an access of bovarysme, have convinced myself it was original. All that’s original are my monochrome treyfs.
Apart from myself the most frequent victim of my light fingers is the greatest of all cooks, Anon.
A restaurant might have as many as 5 or 6 stocks on the go. There’s seldom the room, seldom the need in a domestic kitchen. One will suffice. Avoid stock cubes and supermarket stocks. I rarely include wine and don’t use lamb or pork (the latter’s feet apart).
LEFTOVERS AND BONES AND CARCASSES OF
BEEF
VEAL
CHICKEN
DUCK
GUINEA FOWL
PHEASANT
PIG’S TROTTER
CALF’S FOOT
ONION
GARLIC
CARROT
CELERY
FENNEL
LEEKS
DRIED TOMATO
DRIED CEP
DRIED ORANGE PEEL
JUNIPER BERRIES
MUSTARD SEEDS
PEPPERCORNS
BAY LEAVES
WATER
(WINE, DRY, WHITE)
ROASTING JUICES IF YOU’RE STARTING WITH A LEFTOVER DUCK OR BEEF RIB. NEVER WASTE ANYTHING.
Bones, carcasses, feet and vegetables are best browned in a hot oven to enrich the ultimate flavour – don’t overdo it, don’t let them catch. Deglaze their vessel with water. However, there’s not much to be gained by browning scraps of already cooked meat. The greater the quantity of meat and bones, the more gelatinous, smoother and deeply flavoured the stock will be.
Use a large pan – 10 litres or so. Cover the meat and veg and spices with cold water (and dry white wine). Bring to near a boil, but don’t allow the stock to do anything other than just simmer. If it boils the ingredients will break down and it’ll get cloudy. Skim the top every now and then to rid it of the grey murk. Leave to cook for about eight hours.
Strain through a sieve with a double layer of muslin. Strain again.
It can now be boiled and reduced to whatever density is required.
Refrigerate. It’ll turn to jelly.
It ought not to be left to lurk around the fridge for too long without reboiling it.
There’s a hackneyed observation that when someone close dies you recall important things which you kick yourself for not having spoken to them about. When my father died I frisked my brain and came up with nothing. The same when my mother died. Then, about a decade later, it occurred to me that the important thing I had always meant to ask her for was the recipe for the court-bouillon in which she used to cook eels and, sometimes, salmon. This approximation is equally good for veal and chicken.
WATER
WHITE WINE VINEGAR
WHITE WINE
CELERY
FENNEL
CARROT
LEEK
JUNIPER BERRIES
PEPPERCORNS
CORIANDER SEEDS
MUSTARD SEEDS
CUMIN SEEDS
CARAWAY SEEDS
BAY LEAVES
No one flavour should dominate. Go easy, then, with the wine, the vinegar and the celery.
Bring to the boil then simmer for a couple of hours. Strain thoroughly.
The link between literary theft – the unacknowledged stealing of someone else’s imaginative work – and the kidnapping and imprisonment of someone else’s children, i.e. plagiary, was made by the genitally preoccupied Roman epigrammatist Martial. He bizarrely considered these thefts to be of equal gravity. Literature, we may then deduce, is the product of a generative process. So: we imagine children, therefore we have children. Martial, old son, that’s not the way it works.
A chippy deli owner who was also an unbelievably self-important daytime telly chef once berated Keith Floyd for starting most dishes with a mixture of onions, garlic and so on: he seemed, astonishingly, to believe this had something to do with Keith having been educated at a public school. This ignorant poot might as well have chided every cook in southern Europe, the overwhelming majority of whom had not attended the wrong Wellington.
This is the essential of essentials, the basic of basics. It is the foundation of countless braises, stews, sauces, soups. It is referred to throughout this book as mirepoix. (The name comes from the Duc de Mirepoix who was willingly cuckolded by Louis XV.)
ONIONS
GARLIC
CELERY
FENNEL
CARROT
SHALLOT
PARSLEY
BAY LEAF
RAW HAM
OLIVE OIL/DUCK FAT
Whatever you’re using chop it small. The dominant ingredient should be onion. Celery and carrot should be used with caution. The first is aggressive, the latter sweet. If you are using spices include them at the start. They must be cooked. Don’t add them as an afterthought. Cook the mirepoix in olive oil or duck fat for an hour at a low temperature to a point beyond fondant. It should be starting to dissolve.
MUSHROOMS – CHAMPIGNONS DE PARIS/BUTTON MUSHROOMS
SHALLOTS
ONIONS
BUTTER
Cook the finely chopped shallots and onions in butter till getting soft. Add the equally finely chopped mushrooms and cook slowly for an hour.
150G FLOUR
20CL WATER
1 EGG
5CL OLIVE OIL
Beat the egg and oil. Add the sieved flour. Go on beating then pour in the water at a trickle. Cover and leave for an hour or more before using.
50G CHICKPEA FLOUR
10CL WATER
SPICES – CHILLI, CUMIN, CINNAMON, ETC.
Sieve the flour. Mix with the powdered spices, add the water to obtain whatever density you require. Set aside for an hour or so.
There is little that is more preposterously comic than one self-important, thick, entirely humourless celebrity chef suing another self-important, thick, entirely humourless celebrity chef for having plagiarised a recipe to which neither self-important, thick, entirely humourless celebrity chef holds the rights. Are there rights to recipes? Maybe to the words that self-important, thick, entirely humourless celebrity chefs (or their ghosts) use but not to the deeds – the dishes – of which those recipes are no more than a blueprint.
Pimenton piccante and the even more ubiquitous pimenton dulce from La Vera in Extremadura are powdered peppers dried by smoking – hence their distinctive flavour, familiar from numerous pork products including chorizo. They are the distinguishing flavours of Spain and are to be found in all kitchens save those of pretentious neophiliacs in San Sebastian.
Pimenton from Murcia, again hot or ‘sweet’, is the product of sun-dried or air-dried peppers and possesses a less complex flavour.
Piment d’Espelette. A mild spice that takes its name from a village in the French Basque country whose hideous spray-on half-timbering is mercifully hidden during those months when strings of peppers are hung from balconies to dry.
Savoury, sarriette, is among the less offensive herbs.
Lovage, livèche, is turbo-charged celery – use with restraint.
Borage leaves can paper-cut your hands. Its flavour recalls cucumber. My grotesquely unjustified and chippy prejudice against it derives from its being a constituent of Pimm’s, which I dislike because of its social and, particularly, sartorial associations: braying men in straw hats, shapeless women in all too English hyperfrump, hyperfloral mode.
Ras el hanout is to Morocco what pimenton is to Spain. Unlike pimenton it is a mixture and so varies. Folklore insists that it contain cantharides, the dazzlingly green beetle also known as Spanish fly, which is both an abortifacient and a primitive Viagra – it irritates the genito-urinary tract and dilates blood vessels. Its sale was banned in Morocco in 1990; whether that ban is zealously policed is moot. Ras el hanout is available in supermarkets in the UK and France. It is also easy to blend your own from powders or, if you have a spice grinder, from dried corns, nuts and roots. The essential ingredients are cumin, nutmeg, allspice, chilli, sugar, ginger, cloves, turmeric, black pepper, cinnamon. The inclusion of belladonna, orris root and monk’s pepper, all of them associable with witchcraft and the hag’s pharmacopoeia, is ill-advised.
Black pepper. While he would undoubtedly have been flattered by the appropriation of his name, it is unlikely that Porfirio Rubirosa would actually have measured up to some of the grinders wielded with menace by leering Italian waiters.
White pepper fell out of fashion in Britain in the trattoria Sixties and has so far failed to make a comeback. Matthew Fort observes in his eye-opening Eating Up Italy that Neapolitan cooks favour it – on aesthetic rather than gastronomic grounds. These sensitive souls don’t like specks of black pepper showing up in a dish. Nor do I.
Mustard. Dijon: Amora moutarde forte is fine. Avoid the stuff with grains and gimmicks like violet mustard from Brive that is coloured with grape must. English: Colman’s is essential for salt beef and pork pies.
Caraway. Powdered for cooking. Crushed for flavouring supermarket own-brand vodka to create kümmel. Whole for eating with Munster, putting in bread, adding to sauerkraut and making potatoes in their jackets just about edible. The most commonly used flavouring in northern Germany, Scandinavia and European Russia after dill (an often unwelcome herb that has to be scraped off dish after dish in Moscow restaurants).
Cumin is akin to caraway; it’s sharper, not so sweet, not so pungent.
Saffron is the most delightful, most sexy of spices. And the most expensive. Also the most likely to be pinchbeck, especially if it’s powdered, when it may have been cut with turmeric. Use saffron in mayonnaise, risotto, with steamed potatoes, potato purée and white fish.
Cardamom. Imparts a fascinating flavour to milk and cream. Good with rice. The shells are to be discarded. The seeds can either be ground or tied in muslin if being used in a braise.
Orange peel. Dry peel in a low oven for several hours. It can then be powdered or broken into shards. A surprisingly powerful flavouring for stews, braises, etc.
Dried ceps are versatile. The one thing they are not is a substitute for fresh ceps. There’s no point in reconstituting them in order to, say, sauté them with garlic. They share little but a name. The dried version is considerably more intense. Their texture renders them more suitable as a flavouring of stocks, long-cooked stews and sauces, and of milk and cream.
Bitter chocolate. A few cubes added to a stew or salmi of red meat or to jugged game have pleasurable results. A few . . . No more.
The writer Charles Dantzig reckons that the British don’t get garlic. They used never to use it, now they use too much . . . But then Dantzig abhors Marseille where it is used in reckless abundance.
There are few savoury dishes that don’t benefit from its inclusion.
Hit a clove with the side of a knife to get the skin off. When garlic is no longer fresh it develops a green germ that is bitter. It is best removed – cut lengthways down the centre of the clove and remove it with the point of a knife.
If you’re adding garlic to something that has been fried – ceps, say, or sauté potatoes – make sure that it doesn’t catch. The flavour of burnt garlic is disagreeable and it is liable to contaminate whatever else is in the pan. Do not remove any of the outer skins if you’re roasting it, the cloves need as much protection as possible.
‘Extra-virgin’ might be a desirable quality in nuns – I don’t know, I have a horror of these poor women unless they are unsuitably dressed in the films of Walerian Borowczyk and Georges Franju – but applied to olive oil it is close to meaningless. ‘Cold pressed’ is equally meaningless so indiscriminately is it used. In France a cheap wine used to adulterate another that commands a high price because of its supposed provenance is known as a ‘vin médecin’. Though ‘huile médecin’ has yet to enter the language, the olive oil trade is just as rackety and bent as the wine trade. Which is a boon to those who dislike the peppery throat-assault of the echt product. In olive oil, as in life, the impure is more satisfying than the pure. The sensible course is to buy according to what it tastes like rather than because of the probably mendacious label recounting the history of the terrain, the family, the mill, the artisan tradition and so on.
Flavour with small chillis, peppercorns, coriander seeds, bay leaves, garlic cloves, fennel twigs, mustard seeds, lemon rind, dried tomatoes, etc. Squeeze these into an empty bottle then fill it with oil. Turn the bottle now and again. The oil will take on the properties of the aromatics in a couple of weeks. Keep the bottle topped up.
Various degrees of chastity have spread to other oils:
Walnut. The best in this instance is mere virgin. Distinguished by its brownish colour. (Refined walnut oil is pale, rather insipid.) Because it burns at a low heat its uses are confined to dressings and vinaigrettes. Store in the fridge.
Colza. The fields of England and France are now largely given over to the cultivation of colza or rapeseed. The unrefined oil tastes much better than the fields smell. Both are shrilly yellow. The oil is good for vinaigrettes. Whoever suggested that the flavour recalls newly mown meadows had never set foot in a noisome slurryscape dotted with agri-polythene and oxidised troughs.
Toasted sesame. Asian dishes are for consuming, not for preparing. It is futile to steal what you can’t understand. And it is presumptuous to cook in a language whose building blocks – its very characters – we do not read or speak. Chinese supermarkets are a delight: an aquarium you can eat, sacks of rice only a forklift can shift, bizarre fruit, marvellous packaging. But I seldom buy anything. This oil is aggressive and of limited use but worth having around till, untouched, it reaches its sell-by. Alternatively, make avocado and sesame paste (p. 32).
Cold pressed sesame. Its relationship to toasted sesame oil is not apparent. I was introduced to it by Nico Ladenis, a chef with a curiosity about cuisines unrelated to that of which he was a consummate master. He was using it to dress something or other. Pour it onto fish, chicken, sweetbreads . . .
Sunflower and peanut. Ideal oils for frying and deep-frying. The better quality ones are components of neutral (or featureless) vinaigrettes.
Duck fat. Much cheaper than goose fat and virtually indistinguishable. A fine medium for chips, sauté potatoes and Pommes Anna.
Butter. Use unsalted butter for all cooking. It burns at a low temperature so, if frying, combine it with sunflower, olive or peanut oil, or duck fat.
Cream. Because I live in France cream means crème fraîche. English double cream’s composition may be different but its culinary properties aren’t.
Beef dripping. Delicious on toast. A scouser’s madeleine. Good for chips and Yorkshire pudding and anything else that comes from north of the Trent.
Cheshire Lif’s annual Restaurant Oscars.