One Flame Navarin and Alice B Toklas

My culinary reading currently is The Cookbook of Alice B. Toklas. It is usual to follow her name with a put-down something like 'the lover of Gertrude Stein', but as her memoirs-cum-cookbook is far more interesting than stream of consciousness rubbish by the latter, let's not.

I read cookbooks for ideas, and historic cookbooks for a real feel for period. Parson Woodforde was on a daily basis far more concerned with tracklements than treaties. Food history is demotic. Alice B's work gives a nice insight into the world of arty (and rich) Americans in Paris in the first half of the 20th century, and the section dealing with their struggles in the countryside of Eastern France in WWII is fascinating.

As with other works though, including some contemporary hits, you do wonder if some of the dishes were ever cooked. Chicken browned briefly in butter then roasted in a medium oven for 35 minutes invites food poisoning. And her Navarin recipe is far too complicated. This is country cooking. It did inspire me to make a Navarin of lamb, however, which is another one flame dish worth noting.

The vital ingredient in Navarin of lamb (apart from the lamb) is turnips, young, small, sweet and something we don't make enough of in this country. On the allotment we grow several varieties, my favourite the purple topped Milan ones, but Snowball is elegant too. Elegant turnips. They are wonderful raw in salads (a salade de racines the best hotel fodder I ever tasted in France), glazed as a vegetable in their own right, or as Creme a la Vierge (still can't do accents here), a delicate soup.

So to the Navarin.

Five small turnips were peeled, quartered and browned in olive oil then removed. I had bought three leg chops for the meat cut into big chunks and likewise browned along with an onion diced small. Flour stirred in followed by boiling chicken stock (I cheated with a cube, ok) and a small glass of brandy (no wine open) made a thin-cream-consistency  sauce. Seasoned with salt, plenty of pepper and a pinch of nutmeg this was left to simmer for 45 minutes with a few bay leaves and twigs of thyme from the garden, then four carrots sliced thinly, a few smallish new potatoes in walnut-sized chunks, and the browned turnips added to cook for 20 more. At the end a big handful of frozen peas was dropped in, left to heat through and then the thing was ready, with a bit of corrective seasoning.

Classic one pot cookery that is forgiving of time until the veg go in. The meat could have cooked for twice the time, but not the potatoes which must retain a bit of bite.