What Do You Cook?

At a social gathering some time back it came out that I am the family cook. Someone of the female persuassion very patronisingly thought that meant I'd mastered one or two dishes for when The Dear Leader was taken up with plans for world domination and didn't have time to fend for us. This person asked the stupid (in the circs) question: 'What do you cook?' Inevitably my reply was sarcastic, but a more considered one would have been that I cook from a repertoire learned over years, to which new things are occasionally added.

Yesterday's main meal was from the tried and tested list, stuffed cabbage Troo style (there should be a circumflex over the first 'o' btw, but I can't figure out how to do them on this). Slice a savoy or similar across as thinly as possible, plunge the greenery into boiling salted water for five minutes, drain, then layer cabbage, sausagemeat, cabbage, sausagemeat, cabbage in a buttered casserole with a good lid and cook at 140C - 150C for 120 - 150 minutes. Each layer of cabbage is seasoned; I add a clove or three of garlic; and the top is dotted with butter before cooking. But it is essentially simple (thank you the late great Jane Grigson).

Such dishes allow me, immodestly, to consider myself a cook (and specifically for that one, an austerity cook once again). In that case it is justified by the making of something really good (there are never any leftovers) for a small outlay (£2 for Sainsubury's Toulouse-style sausages, carefully skinned, 69p I think for the cabbage, pence for the butter and garlic. Cookerhooddomness is reniforced by the fact that I only make it once a year, or even every other year - contrary to that lady's thought, my repertoire consists of hundreds (thousands? I never counted) of dishes. It's something that satisfies in more ways that one - quite filling, but also (contrary to what might be expected of slow-cooked cabbage) enticing beforehand, the savoury sausagey smell filling the ground floor.

It's good, and healthy, to add new stuff to the list too. Midweek I made us something that definitely gets added to the roll of honour for repeating. It was essentially a salad, with rocket as the leaf, plus toms, spring onions, and yellow pepper to bulk it out. To make it more fillling and interesting I added little scallops fried in salty butter, and chunks cut from half a Galia melon. Dressed with lime juice and olive oil, and seasoned with the emphasis on pepper, it was delicious, the salty seafood and sweet melon a lovely match. Not exactly an austerity plateful, though the melon and rocket needed using up and the bag of frozen scallops set up back £4, cheaper than a burger meal for one. And, perhaps because it was so flavoursome, we needed nothing else afterwards.

Good Stuff

Much to SC's annoyance I make the same pronouncement at every Christmas lunch: I'd rather have the accompaniments than the meats, if it came down to a choice. Not that it did, this year we got outside much of a turkey crown and a double wing rib of beef (the latter supplied from the fine Aberdeen Angus cattle of Henry Rowntree). Both were excellent, but it was the stuffing and the bread sauce that will live long in the taste memory.

Whisper it softly, but the bread sauce was an improvement on the blessed Delia's, whose recipe I followed in the main. The quantity of onion and pepper in the steeping milk was doubled, however, left longer, and removed and binned before the breadcrumbs were added, not returned (until it's nearly time to serve) as she suggests. I always make it with nutmeg rather than cloves which are far too medicinal for me. It tasted wonderful, and was as white as the snow that one fears we may never see again.

The stuffing was equally simple: 2oz of breadcrumbs, a medium onion chopped very finely, six sage leaves ditto, the meat from two butcher's sausages, a handful of walnuts reduced to crunchy nibs for texture, seasoning, and an egg to bind it all together. Cooked at 160C for an hour in a dish as deep as it is wide the top was brown and the inside still moist.

To prove my point, at least partly, the turkey and beef made fine sandwiches and snacks for several days; the few bites of bread sauce and stuffing went before Boxing Day was done.