This Month's Recipes...
July – Starter – Potato Salad
From page 79 of The New English Kitchen.
This is the best salad to eat with cold ham or beef. The sweeter the onions, the better it will taste. If you can find Breton or Roscoff onions – they are still sold in strings – so much the better. So-called banana shallots, which are in fact onions, make a good substitute.
Serves 4
1kg salad potatoes
1 tsp salt
6 shallots, or pink Roscoff onions if you can find them, sliced
Mayonnaise (see p393 of The New English Kitchen)
Put the potatoes in a pan, cover with water and add the salt. Bring to the boil and cook until just tender – they should still be waxy in the centre when you cut them open. Drain and leave to cool, then slice thickly. Put them in a bowl and add the shallots and enough mayonnaise to coat. Mix well.
Main – Sausage with shredded spring greens and apple
From page 172 of Kitchenella.
Use a meaty, well-seasoned spicy or garlic sausage. Cumberland or Toulouse sausages are ideal for this inexpensive dish, which can be eaten at any time of year.
Serves 4
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
4-8 large sausages, skinned and sliced
a few rosemary leaves
4 garlic cloves, chopped
2 heads of spring greens or hispi cabbage, shredded into very thin strips
2 dessert apples, cored and sliced
4 tablespoons dry cider, wine or stock
Heat the oil and stir-fry the sausage meat with the rosemary over a medium-high heat. Remove from the pan with a slotted spoon and keep warm. Add the garlic, greens and apple to the pan and cook over a lower heat until the greens are tender. Add the cider, wine or stock and bring to the boil. Pile the sausage meat on top and put the whole pan on the table. Good with boiled potatoes.
Dessert – Summer Pudding
From page 79 of The New English Kitchen.
This moulded pudding made from dry white bread and a mixture of lightly stewed berries doesn't require an exact recipe. You will need enough fruit to fill the pudding basin you wish to use, plus a little over. You could use a traditional pudding basin, a soufflé dish or any shallow dish. I sometimes make summer pudding in large plastic containers for children's meals, serving helpings from them as and when needed. Raspberries, blackberries, tayberries, red and blackcurrants are all suitable for the filling – it's best to use a mixture, but the pectin-rich raspberries are pretty much essential. You can use strawberries, but they tend to disintegrate wastefully when cooked.
Simply stew the fruit gently until the juices run and add enough sugar to remove any sourness. Line the pudding basin with slices of day-old white bread, pour in the compote and cover with a 'lid' of sliced bread, then a saucer small enough to fit inside the basin. Put a weight on top – a can of tomatoes will do – and leave in the fridge overnight.
Push any leftover compote through a sieve to make a sauce. To turn the pudding out, run a blunt knife between the bread casing and the bowl. Invert a plate on top and turn the basin and plate over. If you have ever got water in your gumboots, you will know the noise a summer pudding makes when it unmoulds. Pour over the sauce to cover any white patches. Serve with crème fraîche.
