A fresh palate and a clean plate: how to make the most of a salad
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Version 0 of 1. There’s a game I often play with my team during quiet moments, as the clock moves inexorably toward the start of service, called What Right Now. It works whether I’m by the stoves, on the floor, or helping polish stems behind the bar. All it involves is asking the target what thing in the world they would most like right now to be consuming. Like all the best games, it is simple, satisfying, and often surprisingly challenging. At first I would use it as a tool to encourage creative thinking towards service – in anticipating that the warm afternoon turning to a balmy evening called for Campari and soda, we would better serve our guests’ unconscious desires, preparing to offer them the drink they did not yet know they wanted. But in time it’s become an illustrative thought experiment in the perils of overcomplication. When I first opened Brunswick House, it was a seven-seat espresso bar, in a hastily tiled corner of the storage annexe of a salvage yard. My brother and I had £1,000 each, saved in tips from working as a barman and cook/waiter respectively, which we used to buy a secondhand coffee machine from a scrappie, and a couple of domestic fridges from Argos. I served espresso, espresso with milk, and four differently constructed sandwiches. Overelaboration was the least of my worries. As the business has grown over the past five years, so have I have now expanded to the point where we regularly feed 200 guests a night a menu of the most emphatic celebration of British seasonal cooking, complemented by a 150-bin wine list. This is not done for ostentation, neither is it done in self-agrandisement; it is simply a reflection of my overbearing enthusiasm for food and wine, and my desire to share as much of it as I can with as many wonderful guests as possible. However, as a foil against self-indulgence, I continue to practise What Right Now in officious self-censorship. It makes me forever to question whether what I’m cooking is really what I would like to be eating, and whether as professional cooks we are sometimes guilty of brow-beating our guests – presenting overconstructed plates that are either architecturally or technically baroque. The question therefore becomes not “what right now?” but “is this something I would cook at home for myself and those I hold most dear?” As I’ve got older, I’ve noticed my palate shifting significantly to embrace much cleaner cookery. I want to taste produce, the grass it fed on, the soil it grew in, the sea in which it swam. Eventually, all the dishes I was used to cooking at home – those comforting gratins, stews and pies – seemed claggy, cloudy, indistinct. My domestic repertoire has also shifted to reflect my infant daughter’s interest in food; children have about three times more taste buds than adults, and her discernment in avoiding anything overembellished is something I learn from. My taste in wine has shifted in the same direction, made with as little intervention as is wise to best reflect its origin. Over the next four weeks I will seek to present recipes that, while reflecting the food in my restaurant, also represent the cooking I do at home. I will also share with you the wines I would open to enjoy with these dishes. While I don’t subscribe to the tyranny of “correct” wine-pairing, I think that a good wine can add a lot to the charm of a simple lunch. Green salad I struggled with the idea of including a recipe for a green salad. For so many blindingly obvious reasons it seemed unwarranted, and indeed unwanted – after all, everyone can make a green salad, can’t they? Either I’m being massively condescending, assuming readers have yet to master this high peak of culinary achievement, or crashingly dull, revealing a criminal lack of both imagination and ambition. However it is precisely because of its apparent unsuitability that I was immediately attracted to it – we take it so very much for granted, and fail to give it due care and attention. It feels too ubiquitous to bare scrutiny, and for that reason so very much deserves it. Green salads come ready washed and mixed in suspiciously inflated bags, packed into supermarket chiller cabinets everywhere, requiring only a cursory splot of dressing from one of those perma-emulsified bottles on the adjacent shelf. So many recipes seem to offer infinite means to cheer this bedraggle of leaves – canny dressings, roasted squashes, toasted seeds - health, they promise us, and not heavy or dull. I spend the winter waiting in quiet yearning for the return of green leaves in all their complex variation, and believe in celebrating them as such. Quite aside from the myriad health scares and environmental woes associated with chlorine-soaked bags of hydroponically grown foliage (I actually doubt that the chemical treatments they receive make them suitable even as compost), the satisfaction from breaking down a head of lettuce, picking leaves from stems, washing, drying, only compounds their deliciousness. In the restaurant, we buy our leaves from Chegworth Valley, generally best known for their marvellous varietal apple juices, but best loved by me and my team for their salad-growing. Ben Deme, who runs the family farm, says he can’t explain why their leaves are so good, but much of it must be due to the fine sandy loam in which they’re grown, the rich organic compost and seaweed with which it’s fertilised before planting, and the very attentive and energetic work done in the fields by Deme and his team. I tend to gravitate towards peppery and bitter leaves, such as old-fashioned English rocket, with its enormous, robust spears; land- and watercresses; and oriental mustard leaves such as komatsuna and mizuna. I like to balance these with little gem for volume, and finely minced English garden herbs – chervil and parsley are a preference. For the saladLettuce heads (little gem preferable)RocketMustard leavesChervil and parsley or other garden herbs, finely minced For the dressing1 banana shallot, carefully and finely mincedA generous pinch of fine sea saltA small pinch of caster sugarA good, light vinegar – apple cider is broadly available, though my preference is for one made from rieslingExtra virgin olive oilDijon mustard 1 Mix the salt and sugar through the shallots, cover with vinegar and leave to sit and macerate for an hour. 2 Break any lettuce heads down, and, along with the other leaves, wash in plunge into a deep bowl of cold water, agitating thoroughly to shake free any sand, grit, or indeed caterpillars. Remove and spin dry. 3 Wash, dry and pick the herbs, and mince thoroughly, tossing them up after each pass of the knife to stop them bruising to a paste. Add to the salad leaves. 4 Strain out the shallots and reserve. Add 1 tsp mustard and a quantity of oil triple the amount of vinegar, and beat together thoroughly with a whisk. I prefer a neutral oil such as cold-press rapeseed. The mustard acts as a natural emulsifier, binding the oil and vinegar, limiting the oil’s enervating potency – no one likes a droopy salad. Put the shallots back into the dressing, then mix through the leaves by hand. I like to finish with a coarse sea salt, for flavour and texture. Without salt it ain’t salad. Radishes and butter Butter is one of my daughter’s favourite things, and I do get a little concerned by her ability to consume whole pats of it neat. She licks it like spread from bread, sucks it molten off florets of broccoli, and takes whole bites from fresh sticks as if it were ice-cream. She gets this entirely from me, but without the metabolism of a 22-month-old, I try to eat less of it. We make our own butter at Brunswick House in the same way my maternal grandmother did. We take the best cream we can lay our hands on, culture it with live yoghurt, leave it for 16 hours at room temperature to get going, then churn it. After salting, the solids are left out for three days to mature. The salting is crucial as it stops it going rancid while maturing, while the maturing is crucial as it makes it taste interesting, bringing out grassy, cheesy, complex flavours, where initially it just tastes creamy. It gets a final squeeze to expel the last of the whey, which we then use in other dishes. While I like this butter on a crust of warm sourdough bread, my favourite vehicle is a simple radish, freshly picked with lively tops not yet softened, plunged into iced water to clean. Their limpid peppery crunch is the perfect foil to good butter’s smooth, funky majesty. I like to serve them with a saucer of the above vinaigrette, through which to swipe the leaves as a palate cleanser. Makes about 1 litre1 litre Jersey cream2 tbsp live yoghurtSea salt1 bunch Easter egg radishes, tops looking crisp so you know they’re spanking freshThe above vinaigrette, made with pasted garlic in place of minced shallot Wines that make simple food sing I’ve picked two mountain wines to pair with these simple dishes. High altitudes create the right conditions for slow ripening on the vine and low temperature fermentation in the cellar, which I find leads to greater clarity, finesse and purity in the glass. These are the best qualities for simple dishes. Le Soula Blanc, Vin de Pays Côtes Catalanes (Berry Bros & Rudd, £23.95)Whenever challenged by sceptical voices on the inability of low-intervention winemaking to produce classically great wines, both complex and clean, I open Le Soula Blanc. Grown at high altitude on old mountain vines, this blend of seven Mediterranean white grapes offers a concentrated hit of quince, honey and nuts, with clarity and depth. Zero Infinito NV, Pojer e Sandri, Trentino (Petersham Cellar, £24)The name of this wine refers to the zero intervention in its making. A straw-coloured, yeasty, tannic sparkler from the high Dolomites, it has a delicious nose of elderflowers and apricots, perfect with a simple lunch of salad and charcuterie. |