RIP Parson Woodforde

I finished reading Parson Woodforde's diary at the weekend, and was strangely moved as I saw the last words were about food, roast beef in fact. I have never read a more engrossing book, the little dramas, passing friendships, his mixture of charity and snobbery, were far more fascinating than television crime dramas or block-buster movies. I can almost (not quite) begin to see the attraction of reality TV. Except the people on those shows generally seem to be arses. Posh arses, common arses, celebrity arses, obnoxious arses. Arses.

From the austerity cook's point of view there is much to learn from the parson's household. Not of course the dinners he gave when entertaining, as he so often did (not in the party sense, but feeding friends, relations,  the squire and his wife, so rather than entertaining hosting may be a better word), which would feature several different meats - maybe roast leg of mutton, roast beef, boiled chickens, boiled roots and a variety of tarts and puddings along with fruit and nuts as what he then termed dessert. No, the things his cook prepared for him when it was just the parson and his niece-companion Nancy at home are of greater interest to the careful cook.

I am intrigued, for example, by how pig's face (a frequent dish at his table) was prepared. Giblet soup I can understand better. The bonier cuts too - breast of veal, neck of mutton and suchlike - were reserved for such ordinary meals. And the humble fish - flounders, mackerel, plaice and so on - that were fetched from market at Norwich - speak volumes about making the best of ordinary ingredients.

More unusual for our times, at least for native Brits if we can use the term, was his enjoyment of freshwater fish like tench, carp, eels, pike and perch. Our coarse fishermen tend to throw back their catch (probably best to do so with eels which are in decline here currently), but then a lot of sea anglers don't actually like to eat fish, which is decidedly odd.

I've eaten perch in France and Switzerland, and love pike quenelles when prepared by a good chef. Perch is actually quite tasty, slightly reminiscent of dab to my palate. Our dream once son has flown the nest is to downsize to a cottage with enough land for a small orchard, and to have a fishing pool - his at one time Woodforde's greatest diversion and almost obsession. Visiting religious houses like Furness Abbey always at some point leads to the spot where the monks kept fish in vast ponds and pools. Yet we now only keep Koi Carp and similarly decorative creatures, whose owners would blanch at the idea of eating them. As our population grows and our grasp on the world's resources loosens we may revert to such medieval models of self-sufficiency (or better, self-reliance), though as Woodforde's facility showed we were still keen on this just a couple of centuries ago.

One Flame Pudding II - Something in Toast

Having finished Elinor Fettiplace's Receipt Book I have moved on to Gervase Markham, more or less contemporary with her. Early in the book Panperdy (Pain Perdu) features, which prompted me to cook a version of that treat for breakfast today - French toast in other words.

For such a simple dish it has many sides. It is something we know was popular in late medieval times if not earlier, the cinnamon and sugar used in it almost ubiquitous then, for the well-to-do at least. The way some Americans eat it, accompanying a meat element like bacon, is reminiscent of such days too. It is for the economical cook a way of using bread heading towards staleness, though as this morning I used four eggs (albeit two were tiny ones from our newest hen) it is stretching things to call it an austerity dish. And it is both a breakfast classic and a quickly made pudding as the case arises.

The secrets for me of decent French toast, and everyone has their own version, are: stretch the eggs with a splash of milk, which helps the beaten mix soak better into the bread; sugar and cinnamon (and a tiny pinch of salt) to be added with that mix and the first two sprinkled on the surface again after cooking; cut white bread into quite thin slices; allow at least five minutes for the bread to soak up the eggy stuff, turning it so both sides are coated; use unsalted butter and not too much for the frying; and a low-ish heat for the cooking. I don't toast the bread as some do, so my version is probably more accurately called eggy bread.

With a small glug of sweet sherry (sweet Vermouth, Marsala or Madeira would probably work too) added to the fluid this becomes the beautifully-named Poor Knights of Windsor, a pretty pudding that looks best if the bread is cut into fingers - soldiers perhaps the apposite term.

Like most cooking the worst thing to do is rush it - unless the egg mix has reached the centre of the bread it isn't right.

The Markham book is one of the excellent Penguin Great Food series, an extract from the original volume The English Huswife.

Swiss Bliss

Swiss chard is something you hardly ever see in supermarkets - it tends to fade quite quickly, the bright green leaves look tired after a day and where the stem is cut turns an unappealing purply-black. So best to grow it yourself. More positive reasons to love the stuff are that once established it survives frosts and stands over the entire winter even in the wilds of Preston; you get two veg for the price of one - the leaves cooked like spinach, stems treated entirely differently; and the stems in particular have a pleasing sweet earthiness about them. Inevitably some cookbooks equate them to asparagus (along with a dozen other veg that taste nothing like the magic green sticks), but they have a fine flavour of their own.

Sunday's roast was followed by a gratin of the stems, cut into 2cm pieces and parboiled for five minutes. The  bechamel was flavoured with grated Parmesan which suited the sweetness of the chard, and in the post-roast oven browned nicely. It was almost a pudding -  if I'd used ground almonds in place of flour as a thickener it would have been even more like some medieval sweet-savoury offering.

It's always a good sign that nothing is left in the dish, but sadly this year we have grown very little chard - not for want of trying, the wet weather took its toll - so at most we can look forward to two more repeat servings now.