Vegetarian

Early January 2008 and I am having my annual tidy up of the pantry. The “lentil shuffle” as I call it, as that is basically what the job entails. Sorting out the pantry always results in my making something bean or lentil oriented. I think it must remind me of just how many I have. What follows is a rather hot bean curry. You could cool its ardor by skipping a chile or two. The greens offer a hit of cool freshness on top of the substantial and deeply spiced beans. A speedier version, suitable for a midweek supper, can be made with canned beans. There is no real reason why you shouldn’t use any dried or canned beans you wish here. Chickpeas will work well too. If I do decide to open a can instead, then I use three 14-ounce (400g) cans.

One of the gifts of the nouvelle cuisine movement was the puréed vegetable. At its worst, a sad puddle of unidentifiable beige gunk; at its most successful, a moreish pool of intensely flavored, silk-textured essence. Sprouts, which marry so happily with cream, tend to look like baby food when given this treatment, so I keep them coarsely chopped instead of whizzed to a pulp. I am exceptionally fond of this little side dish.

Any blue cheese will melt into the sauce for these sprouts, but I have been using a lot of Stichelton recently, a relatively new, gratifyingly buttery cheese made from unpasteurized milk. A main course with rice or plainly cooked pasta, and a particularly satisfying side dish for boiled ham.

The market: stumpy carrots, the prickle of frost, dark greens, the scent of wet soil. Here and there among the trestle tables are shallow baskets: Russian kale, tips of cavolo nero with their infant leaves, broccoli heads the size of a mushroom, and sprigs of purple and white sprouting so small you can hold ten in the palm of your hand. Each sprig of vegetable is so precious, so diminutive, as timid as a chanterelle. I pick them up with finger and thumb, which seems the way they must have been picked from their stems. These are shoots plucked from the stem after the growing heart of the plant has been removed. No smothering of cheese sauce, just a three-minute trip in the steamer and a classic hollandaise to dip them in, let down with a dash of cream and a grating of zest from a blood orange.

In the 1980s, puréed beets, snipped chives, and swirls of sour cream made a startling chilled soup that became an almost permanent fixture at the café in which I cooked for much of the decade. The most outrageous Schiaparelli pink, it was a picture in its deep white-porcelain tureen. I wish now I had had the nerve to include the finely chopped gherkins whose sweet-sour pickle notes could have lifted the soup from its candy-cane sweetness. One glance at a Russian or Swedish cookbook would have been enough.

The chickpea possesses a dry, earthy quality and a knobbly texture that I find endlessly useful and pleasing to eat. No other member of the legume family has quite the same mealy, warm nuttiness. This is the bean I want bubbling on the stove when there is pouring rain outside, filling the kitchen with its curiously homey steam as it slowly simmers its way to tenderness. Unlike its more svelte cousins, the flageolet and the cannellini, the chickpea is almost impossible to overcook. The length of time it takes to soften rules it out of weekday cooking for me, so I sometimes resort to opening a can. Chickpeas, often labeled ceci or garbanzo, leave their can relatively unharmed, which is more than you can say for a flageolet. They make good patties that you can season with cumin, chile, garlic, sesame, or coriander and fry until lightly crisp on the outside. Chickpea patties need a little texture if they are to be of interest. I process them only so far, leaving them with a texture that is partly as smooth as hummus with, here and there, a little crunchiness. The patty mixture needs a good ten minutes to rest before cooking. To calm the garlic notes, I spoon over a sauce of yogurt, grated cucumber, and mint or a similar one of shredded beets, taking care not to overmix it to a lurid pink.

A good contrast here between the sweetly warm beets, nutty hemp, and tangy goat cheese. Any crisp, slightly bitter salad leaf will work. The English-grown ivory and crimson chicory, crunchy, juicy, and appealing to the eye, works well but the classic white would be just as welcome.

I have used Taleggio, Camembert, and English Tunworth from Hampshire as an impromptu “sauce” for warm asparagus with great success. A very soft blue would work as well.

I retain a soft spot for canned asparagus. Not as something to eat with my fingers (it is considerably softer than fresh asparagus, and rather too giving), but as something with which to flavor a quiche. The canned stuff seems to permeate the custard more effectively than the fresh. This may belong to the law that makes canned apricots better in a frangipane tart than fresh ones, or simply be misplaced nostalgia. I once made a living from making asparagus quiche, it’s something very dear to my heart. Still, fresh is good too.

There is no joy in undercooked asparagus. Neither, curiously, is there much flavor. It must be soft and juicy, otherwise it loses much of its magic. Baking the spears in an aluminum foil parcel in the oven will suit those who don’t like messing around with boiling water and steam, and keeps the asparagus surprisingly succulent.

Asparagus is something you feel the need to gorge on, rather than finding the odd bit lurking almost apologetically in a salad or main course. The exceptions are a risotto—for which you will find a recipe in Appetite—and a simple rice pilaf. The gentle flavor of asparagus doesn’t take well to spices, but a little cinnamon or cardamom used in a buttery pilaf offers a mild, though warmly seasoned base for when we have only a small number of spears at our disposal.

You can purchase a product called chocolate batons (available at specialty stores and online) that’s specifically designed for rolling into chocolate croissants. But, if you’d like to make your own batons from scratch, here’s a recipe, followed by a method for shaping chocolate croissants. You could also fill these croissants with almond paste, or try savory fillings, like ham and cheese, creamed spinach, or bacon crumbles.

In Greece and Turkey, this bread is called Christopsomo or tsoureki (also known as lambpropsomo during Easter). It differs from stollen in that it’s proofed before baking, but the proofing time is shorter than for panettone. Mastic gum, also called mastica, is an aromatic gum resin derived from the bark of a Mediterranean shrub tree in the pistachio family. It can be found at stores that specialize in Greek and Middle Eastern ingredients. It adds a subtle and......breath-freshening flavor and aroma (no surprise, it has long been used as a natural breath freshener).

Hot cross buns are a traditional Good Friday bread, but they can be made anytime (in Elizabethan England they could only be baked during Easter week or during Christmas, but times have changed). There are, of course, many similar commemorative breads throughout Europe, each with their own twist. Currants and spices such as allspice, mace, nutmeg, and cinnamon are commonly used in the English version. Much folklore and many recipe variations for hot cross buns are available on the Internet (and they’re worth reading), but I prefer the following additions to the basic holiday bread recipe. However, feel free to use your own favorite spice and fruit combinations, or simply bake the buns without any additions, as the buns are wonderful with or without the fruit, spices, and glazed cross.

The dough for croissants, Danish, and certain other pastries is made by a method known as lamination, which involves folding layers of dough and butter (or another fat) to create many thin layers that puff when baked. Puff pastry, the classic unyeasted version of this dough, is used to make many pastries. In this book, I’ll stick with a yeasted formula that can be used to make both croissants and Danish pastry. There are many versions of laminated dough and many systems of rolling to create a specific number of layers. The system I’m presenting here certainly isn’t the only one that works, but I like it because it’s easy and also incorporates overnight fermentation to create a superb product. Feel free to modify it if you prefer more or fewer layers. The most common error home bakers make when laminating is to apply too much pressure to the dough, which breaks the paper-thin layers of dough and fat. To help with this, the formula here creates a very soft, pliable dough, and the method calls for a fair amount of dusting with flour to prevent sticking. There are two parts to the final dough: the détrempe and the butter block. The détrempe is the plain dough before the butter is rolled in. The butter block is the fat that will be laminated between layers of dough. There are many ways to incorporate the fat into the détrempe, including spreading it by hand in dabs over the rolled-out dough, which is sometimes called spotting. The method here is more systematic, using a series of letter folds (in thirds) to produce 81 layers of dough and fat—more than enough for a great accordion-style expansion of the layers (one of the recipe testers called it a concertina effect). Should you decide to experiment and try making more layers, just keep in mind that the layers are more vulnerable to rupturing as they get thinner, which defeats the purpose of laminating. I always suggest getting good at 81 layers before adding a fourth letter fold, which will increase the number of layers to 243. You can use either unbleached bread flour or all-purpose flour for the dough. Bread flour provides more structure, while all-purpose flour, being slightly softer, makes a more tender product.

I’ve set myself up by staking a claim to the best biscuits ever. But when I made these biscuits, I was so astonished by their flavor and texture that I decided there couldn’t possibly be a more perfect biscuit—at least not any that I’ve ever tasted. Be forewarned, a generous amount of butter is a key ingredient here, so these biscuits are not for those who are squeamish about fat! That said, if you find these biscuits to be too rich, feel free to use low-fat buttermilk instead of cream for the liquid. Some people insist that only shortening has enough pure fat in it to make a flaky biscuit. While lard and shortening do contain 100 percent fat to butter’s mere 85 percent, there’s nothing to match butter when it comes to flavor. Also, I find that biscuits made with shortening sometimes have a waxy aftertaste. If you insist on using shortening, chill it for 1 hour before cutting it into the dough, and reduce the amount by about 15 percent, to 7 tablespoons (3.5 oz / 99 g). I have heard it said that there are two types of people in the world, those who like tender biscuits and those who like flaky biscuits. (I’m usually in the flaky camp.) In this recipe, I’ve replaced the traditional buttermilk with cream, which essentially makes this both a cream biscuit (and therefore tender) and a flaky biscuit. If you wonder how I arrived at this idea, it was one of those aha/duh moments, in this case brought about because I had forgotten to buy buttermilk. Discovering that I had some heavy cream on hand, I realized that there was no rule prohibiting me from trying to bring the best of both worlds together. I learned a new trick for incorporating the butter into the flour from a few of my excellent recipe testers: Freeze the butter, then use the large holes on a cheese grater to grate it directly into the dry ingredients (or use the grater attachment on a food processor, with the dry ingredients in the bowl below). Not only does this method save time, but it creates the perfect size butter pieces for the biscuits. You can use this method when making pie dough too!

Panettone is the famous Christmas bread of Milan, though it is now made and consumed year round. Pandoro, or “golden bread,” originated in Verona and is traditionally baked in starshaped molds, but otherwise bears strong similarities to its more well-known Milanese counterpart. Although this dough can be mixed by hand, it’s very hard to do so because of the long mixing time required, so I recommend using a stand mixer. (You could also use a food processor if you pulse, rather than processing for extended periods.) At first, the dough will be more like a batter, but as you scrape down the mixing bowl, it will eventually form a very supple, delicate dough that feels wonderful to the touch. It can be formed into a ball or other bread shapes, but if you squeeze too hard it will become loose and sticky again. You may want to purchase paper or metal panettone or pandoro molds, which are available at specialty cookware stores. Keep in mind that smaller loaves bake more quickly and are softer and less crusty than larger loaves. Muffin and popover pans, as well as small brioche cups, make nice molds for mini loaves, as do small cans. You’ll end up with a better loaf if you let the dough rise slowly at room temperature rather than force the rise (for example, by placing the dough in a pilot-lit oven, which is a tempting way to speed up the rising time for many doughs). It may take up to 12 hours for the dough to rise and fill the form, but it’s worth the wait. Warmer proofing risks melting the butter in the dough, so the finished product will have the structure of a kugelhopf coffee cake—which isn’t bad, but it doesn’t have the unique peel-apart qualities of the slower-rising panettone or pandoro.

Babka is a rich, yeasted cross between bread and coffee cake with an equally rich Russian and Polish culinary heritage. The name is derived from the Russian baba, which means grandmother, an appropriate name for this wonderful comfort food. While it is mostly known as a popular Jewish bread filled with some combination of chocolate, cinnamon, almonds, even poppy seeds and sometimes topped with streusel, it can also be filled with raisins or soaked with rum, as in baba au rhum. The dough is rich enough that it can also be used for brioche and kugelhopf. In American bakeries, babka is most often formed as a twisted loaf with veins of the sweet filling running throughout, baked either in a loaf pan or freestanding. However, the Israeli version, known as kranz cake, uses a dramatic shaping technique that many of my recipe testers found appealing. This recipe is my favorite version, with both cinnamon and chocolate in the filling. Of course, you can leave out the chocolate and make a cinnamon sugar version, or leave out the cinnamon and make just a chocolate version, but I say, why leave out either? It’s easier to grind the chocolate chips or chunks if they’re frozen. After you grind them, you can add the cinnamon and butter and continue to process them all together. The streusel topping is also optional, but I highly recommend using it on the freestanding versions.