How Much Garlic is Too Much?

I'm a great reader of old cookery books. Or maybe food books is a better description - I find those with a succession of neatly laid out recipes and no intellectual exploration dull in the extreme. If you read any from the 1970s and earlier you'll see garlic given as an optional ingredient 'if liked'. We like.

Yesterday I roasted a chicken (not one of our garden variety) atop a whole bulb of the stuff, each clove carefully skinned before use. It was garlic as vegetable (eventually incorporated in the whooshed sauce) rather than flavour enhancer. As I wet roasted the bird the cloves softened in the liquid, leaving them incredibly sweet without caramelising at all. The bottom floor had a nice garlicky aroma, but this morning that had gone as you'd expect, and none of us had garlic-breath, that maybe you wouldn't.

In my extremely late thirties health and food have become closely linked. A friend with whom a fortnightly pint was shared died suddenly last summer, bringing such matters into stark perspective. I often wonder about our diet - wide variety of styles and ingredients, nothing deep fried, moderate drinking (though while we're on the topic, which bastard thought up Dry January btw?), lots of home-produced veg, etc etc. Garlic is one thing I have upped since such thoughts became more focussed. As garlic is supposed to work wonders on the blood, and on blood pressure, I'd love to know the before and after BP readings for the three of us - but save me from becoming Glenn Gould - he kept a diary of his, genius and madness near neighbours there.

Don't Waste That Pumpkin

How many of the pumpkins bought for Halloween actually get used for food? Even a good percentage of the many squashes grown on the nation's allotments probably get stuck in a bowl on the table as a nice natural decoration to be thrown away when they fall to bits. I felt very virtuous yesterday using a Turk's Turban squash as part of our Sunday roast extravaganza. And it was lovely.

The fruit, for such it is pedants, had been sitting in our conservatory for a month, picked to avoid being nicked before halloween, then playing the role of something I'd get round to eventually, which turned out to be yesterday.

Thanks to Nigel Slater, as ever fab ideas, annoying writing: I got the basic idea from his Tender Part 1.

The squash was peeled, cleaned of stingy bits and seeds, and cut into one inch dice (that's 2.54cm dice for those of a modern bent), then rolled in loads of crushed garlic, thyme from outside the back door, and Maldon salt (how very Middle Class is that?). Roasted (in a solid Le Creuset dish so piling exotic bourgeois onto solid Middle Class) along with the chicken and some red onions to make use of the oven it smelled fantastic, the outside crisping and garlicky the inside soft and melting.

This was another of those dishes that not only tastes good, but looks superb, a rich sunshine gold, something to raise the spirits at this time of the year when it seems to go dark about 15 minutes after dawn.

All Together Now or One at a Time

With good weather we have the opportunity to eat outside, and our favoured way of doing this is for me to prepare a mezze, that is have a variety of dishes ready to bring to the table in one lot, to avoid traipsing in and out of the kitchen with floor cleaning and atmosphere breaking consequences. Behind that is perhaps the additional motivation that this manner of eating reminds us of Greece, hot sunshine and great simple food.

Yesterday, partly because we were too hungry to wait while the roast chicken rested, we opted for a la Russe, i.e. the more conventional series of dishes: pate on toast starter, stuffed peppers as a vegetable course, then the chicken with rice and mushrooms. The day before we had gone for the mezze, with about eight different things on the table at once, albeit in relatively small quantities, though the beef stiffado (that's posh for stew with peppers, paprika and oregano) was substantial.

So I had the chance to compare. The mezze was by far the more enjoyable meal, even though the chicken with rice was really tasty. It's the exchange of plates and bowls, the sharing aspect, and perhaps the informality that comes perforce with such activity, that makes the difference to mood. Of course that preference probably depends on personality. On business travels in my old career I loved visiting mom and pop and middle range restaurants, where there was no danger of maitre D snobbery and whispered conversations. Phillip's Foote restaurant in Sydney where you not only serve yourself but cook your steak yourself is one of the few places visited in those years whose name I recall.

A la Russe as the norm here only dates from the mid-19th century. It has practical benefits with hot food that you want really hot - if soup, casserole and some steaming baked pudding are all brought out together something will go cold before it's eaten. But if the heat of dishes (something about which we British can be maniacal) is not vitally important as is the case in summer, then for me it's all together now.

Don't Trim the Trimmings

I wrote a post the other day about a sprout not being just for Christmas, and this one is along the same lines - why should bread sauce only appear on December 25th, never to be seen again for the rest of the year?

I'm not sure if this is about leftovers - though the crumbs now waiting to be added to steeping milk were from a roll past its best - or about making the ordinary special with a bit of forethought. Today's main meal is to be roast chicken, with a few if not all the trimmings: gravy made from the meat juices, stuffing (cooked on its own not in the bird), and the bread sauce. I'll make roast potatoes too, with the fat skimmed off some beef stock as part of the cooking medium.

There is a pleasing continuity in this, with that beef stock and thus fat made from a previous roast; the use of the ageing roll; and the promise of chicken and bread sauce sandwiches tomorrow if as expected neither element is finished today.

Of course there is nothing wrong with throwing together a stir-fry when time is tight, or if it takes your fancy. But when as on a cold January Sunday one has time aplenty why not think ahead? A case in point is the milk brought to a near boil with a quartered onion and four bay-leaves, plus a chip or two of nutmeg (my bread sauce favours those flavours over the more traditional cloves) and some peppercorns, then removed from the heat to infuse for several hours. There will be glazed carrots, started a good hour before we sit down to eat. And the roast spuds, parboiled to near-doneness well before they are to be finished in a super-hot oven as the chicken rests.

Our Sunday is far from empty - two of us working, one doing homework, and various leisure pursuits pursued. Some in that position would rather graze, trying to fit more activities into an amorphous day (and avoiding others in the house). A Torygraph article yesterday (I became a convert to their crossword if not their politics during the MPs' expenses scandal) also made once more the obvious point that those eating together are likely to be healthier - grazing fodder not famed for its balance and nutrition. Sitting down together over our main meal (as we already did over brunch) punctuates the day, provides structure, and is in itself leisure. And we eat well.

Parson Woodforde and the Great British Pie

Not that I am stuck in the past, but my new reading is Parson Woodforde's diary, or at least the Folio Society's selections from it. Somewhat less than brilliant observations: how did the middle classes and above actually manage to stand in the 18th century? The good parson drank vast quantities of wine, cider, beer, arack, punch, rum and brandy, yet it was his brother Jack who was the sot. And what did it do to their livers? One wonders if the frequent reports of deaths of apoplexy were the terminal points of organ damage caused by alcohol.

From the foodie point of view (or has foodie become as unacceptable and derogatory as luvvie now?) there is much to be gleaned from the pages of his journal. He lived well, and his guests could generally rely on a table laden with several major main-course components - a fowl, boiled pork, rost (his spelling) beef, perhaps a leg of mutton.

Somewhat inspired by this at the weekend I served visiting friends a roast chicken and a venison and beef pie, along with vegetables various. Not unsurprisingly the pie was the hit - everybody loves a pie. Please someone commission me for that TV series/book/world pie-tasting tour. Venison from Lidl, beef from Henry Rowntree, both meats cooked together in a low (125C) oven with bay, thyme, carrots and onions for two and a half hours, then freshly cooked onions, carrots and turnips added and the lot covered with cheaty Jus-Rol puff pastry. I am a fan of own brands, but for some reason the Jus-Rol stuff seemed better than the last lot of Sainsbury's I used - though they may be made together for all I know. The juice from the oven cooking was reduced and thickened with cornflour (how terribly unfashionable) then half of it spooned into the meat and veg before the pastry lid went on. About 30 minutes at 180C finished the thing off, the puff pastry lifting clear of the filling at the end. This was a pie, a Great British Pie.