#313 Jellied Eel Mousse with Watercress Sauce

This is one of the recipes that when I started this project, really made me shudder. However, as I have cooked a couple of eel recipes, I have discovered that I quite like the slippery critter and it no longer seemed such a challenge. Plus all of the weird recipes thus far have turned out pretty good and I have lost all squeamishness; I have a philosophy that in rich countries people eat things because they taste good, not because they need to simply survive.

This recipe is an update of the famous London dish – jellied eels. I have never tried them before and thought it rather a shame that the classic recipe isn’t in the book. Jellied eel is particularly associated with the East End of London though it was eaten throughout the city and appeared sometime in the eighteenth century. At that time, the Thames was crawling with eels and therefore many, many recipes were created. When eel consumption reached a peak during the Victorian era, the Thames had become pretty disgusting with pollution and there were not many eels around, so they had be imported from Ireland. These days, most Irish eels are exported to Holland.

If you wanted to buy jellied eels in London, you would have had to go to an Eel Pie and Mash House. There not many around – they declined in number from over a hundred after the Second World War to just a handful today. The most famous – and London’s oldest – extant Eel and Pie House is Manze’s in Peckham. I have never been to one of these places, but I shall try my best to frequent Manze’s next time I pop down to London. I doubt if they will ever regain popularity, even though eels have now returned to the River Thames.

Inside Menzie’s (photo from The Guardian)

This is an ‘updated’ recipe from chef Guy Mouilleron, who apparently thought of an eel slithering through a bank of watercress and thought the two might might together. The recipe is outdated; fish mousses are certainly a thing of the 1970s and 1980s; when English Food was first published.

Eels are quite difficult to get hold of, but the massive Asian supermarket in St Louis has farmed live ones – luckily I didn’t have to do away with them as I had to for the first time I cooked an eel dish. There is one more eel dish to do in the book, so I suppose I shall be trying that one soon.

To make the mousse, you need to prepare your eels. You’ll need around 2 ½ pounds of eel altogether. If you can get the fishmonger to skin and fillet them for you, all’s the better. I didn’t have such a luxury, but found it quite easy now that I have had certain amount of experience with eel preparation. First of all, give them a wash and wipe away any slime that may remain on the skin. To skin an eel, you first need to cut through the skin all around its neck, behind the gills. Next, either nail the head to a wooden chopping board or grasp the head with a tea-towel. Now you need to pull on the cut skin and peel the skin off like a stocking. It is quite difficult to get a purchase, so sprinkle the neck liberally with salt to create some much-needed friction. Once skinned, it is pretty easy going after that; gut it, cutting from the head-end to an inch or so past the vent so that the kidneys as well as the other internal organs can be removed. Filleting was a bit tricky – but really it was just like filleting any fish really. Use a sharp knife and cut from the head end to the tail end, pressing down on the fish with your other hand, which creates pressure and makes the cut much easier to make.

Cut away about a third of the messy parts and use trimmings to make the mousse itself.

To do this, you need to liquidise them in a blender along with three egg whites. You will produce a rather bad-looking blob of grey matter.

Place it in a bowl that is sitting in iced water. Whip ¾ of a pint of double cream until it is thick, but not stiff, and fold it into the eel mixture slowly. Season the purée and the neat eel pieces with salt, pepper and nutmeg.

All is prepared now for the construction of the mousse: you need to use a terrine for this, or failing that, a small loaf tin. If you want to turn out the mousse onto a serving dish, it is best to line it with cling film (don’t worry, it won’t melt). Now spread a third of the mixture over the bottom of the terrine and then add half of the eel fillets, then more mixture and so on, until all is used up.

Cover the terrine or tin with a double-layer of foil and then steam it for 1 ¼ hours. I used a fish kettle for this, but if you don’t have something appropriate, you can pop it in a roasting tin containing boiling water and bake it at 160-180⁰C (325-350⁰F). When cold, put it in the fridge overnight.

The next day, make the sauce. You need a good-sized bunch of watercress. From the bunch, pick and reserve enough leaves to make around a tablespoon when chopped. The rest, liquidise in the blender, using the smallest amount of water possible. Pass the watercress slurry through a sieve and add ¼ pint of double cream and whisk it until it thickens. Season and stir through the reserved, chopped leaves. Serve a slice of the mousse with a generous spoonful of the sauce.

#313 Jellied Eel Mousse with Watercress Sauce. My God, what a sight that one was! It looked like a massive chunk of cat food and the sauce was so garish. The taste of the mousse wasn’t too bad, but the texture seemed so wrong. If it had been eaten warm as a creamy stew, it probably would have been delicious. The mild fish and the grassy watercress did not go together in my opinion. A big shame because was waiting to be surprised by its loveliness. I think I would have been happier with some proper jellied eels. Keep the fish mousse where it belongs: in the past! 2/10

#312 Pork Pie

“Provocative of indigestion as that pie may seem to you, it was put together by a lovely cousin at Melton Mowbray, whose fair hands are equally skilful in rendering a sonata of Beethoven, or in compounding the gastronomic mysteries of the kitchen.”

Excerpt from Dialogues of the Living – Table Talk by J Hollingshead,
appearing in The Train magazine, 1857

The pork pie is the ultimate raised pie in England and the best come from Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire, a very old English town, founded around the 8^th Century. The Melton Mowbray hand-raised pork pie attained Protected Geographical Indication status in 2008 – this means that only pies made within Melton Mowbray can proudly bare the town’s name. If you buy a pork pie that doesn’t bear the name, then it is not the real-deal. Unfortunately, Cornwall missed the boat in getting their pasties recognized by the EU, so a Cornish pasty can proudly bear the Cornish name, when it was actually baked in Milton Keynes or whatever.

The Olde Pork Pie Shoppe –

the best place to buy a proper Melton Mowbray pork pie

So what makes a Melton Mowbray pork pie special, other than the location it was made in? Well, first they should be hand-raised, second the pork inside should be uncured and the bacon unsmoked. There is also a secret ingredient: anchovy essence. Anchovy essence is not widely available these days, but it is possible to find it. In America, you’ll have to order some from Amazon. You could cheat of course by using some nam pla – Thai fish sauce. There is no difference between them at all. Don’t be put off by this, the sauce gives the meat a delicious seasoning. In fact it is quite common to use anchovies in this way with lamb, and oysters are great in a steak and kidney pudding. We have stopped combining our fish and meat these days, yet have no issue when we eat them together when we order dishes from a Far Eastern restaurant. Strange.

The main difficulty for anyone who may want to attempt this recipe in the USA is not finding the anchovy essence – oh no – it is the unsmoked bacon that is the tricky customer. I hunted high and low for it when I was in Houston, but I never found wet-cured, unsmoked back bacon. I assumed that if I wanted to make a pie whilst living in the States, I would simply have to wet cure my own. However, at a Farmer’s Market in Chicago, I happened upon a stall selling not only unsmoked back bacon, but also traditional British sausages. The stall is run by an English chap, who coincidentally comes from Leeds too, called Nicholas Spencer. Check out his website here. He said he’ll be doing mail order soon, so I am looking forward to that.

Anyways, if you want to have a go at making your own traditional pork pie you need to get planning! It is quite an effort, though very good fun. I’ve already posted about making raised pies. In brief (with links) you need to get three things ready: hot water pastry for the raised crust, a jellied stock, and the filling itself. I’ll provide you with the recipe for the pork pie filling here…

First of all prepare the pork. You will need two pounds altogether – boned weight. You need a cut of pork that is around one-quarter fat, so go for shoulder, leg or ribs. Make sure you get the bones form the butcher so you can use them in your jellied stock. Also at the butchers, get yourself an eight ounce pack of unsmoked back bacon. When you get home, chop the meat. Keep the best bits chunky, in around a centimetre dice, the other bits, chop finely. This is a bit of an effort, but it is this chopping – rather than mincing – that gives you the proper texture. Also, chop up two rashers of the bacon. Into a bowl, put in your chopped meat and mix in the following: a teaspoon of chopped sage, a teaspoon of anchovy essence and half a teaspoon each of ground cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice. Lastly, season well with salt and pepper. If you want to check the seasoning is correct, take a small amount of the mixture and fry it. Taste and correct accordingly.

When it comes to putting the pie together, use the remaining bacon to line the raised pie crust, add the mixture, packing it in well.

Cover with a pastry lid and finish it off, following the method in the raised pies post.

What should one eat with a pork pie? These pies are great for buffets and picnics, so eat whatever you are serving at your buffet or picnic… Personally, I like some nice brown HP sauce or maybe tomato sauce. Some like to warm the pies and have them with mushy peas. I have been eating mine with the preserved spiced oranges I recently cracked open – a really good combination that.

#312 Pork Pie. It seems you can never be let down by these raised pies. This one was great: the mild herbs and spices gave the meat a subtly complex flavour. The idea of a cold meat pie feaked a few people out at work, and suppose the jelly is something you either love or hate. I have been eating the pie slowly over the last few days, and it seems to get better as it ages. Very good, not quite as delicious as the Veal, Ham and Egg Pie, but still pretty tasty. 8/10.

#311 Courgette and Parsnip Boats

If you’re afraid of butter, use cream.
Julia Child

This is a recipe that I, admittedly, have been avoiding. A courgette and parsnip boat? What the heck is the point of that? Of course, I have nothing against neither courgettes nor parsnips, but this seemed a little over the top: scooping out the centres of courgettes and then piping hot parsnip purée inside. Hm. This is a recipe that Grigson was trying to introduce us to the 1970s, and it seems very 1970s – very Fanny Craddock. The recipe comes not from her, but from a certain Julia Child. You may have heard of her.

I suppose I have to bring up the subject of a certain blog-cum-bestselling-book-cum-Hollywood-movie called Julie & Julia, created, of course, by Julie Powell. I cannot believe that she stole my idea! What’s more, I cannot believe that she travelled forward in time only to see my blog, steal my format and then travel back in time to start up her own blog, only to rake in shedloads of cash. Despicable behaviour.

That might be a tiny fib. But I remember being well annoyed when I found out that there was already blogs out there doing the same thing as me. And here I was thinking I had an original idea.

Anyways, back to the matter in hand… Grigson does ‘not apologise for including [the recipe]’, but this non-apology is for the fact she has included a recipe from America. She needn’t apologise for that. However, as a straight-forward lady, I am rather surprised that she included it in here. I think perhaps she was actually trying to introduce us to eating courgettes; I remember them being a rather exotic ingredient in our house growing up the in the 1980s, even though they are just baby marrows. She also goes on to complain of so-called ‘fancy touches’, saying that they are usually an excuse for serving bad food, giving such examples as radish roses on salads and cheap buttercream stars upon margarine cakes. Is this recipe any different though? We’ll see…

In case any Northern Americans are a bit confused about this strange thing called the courgette, I am talking about the zucchini of course.

The recipe serves six people, but you can easily increase or decrease the ratios if there is not six to feed.

Begin by selecting six courgettes around six inches long. Top and tail them and cut each one lengthways before scooping out the seeds. Plunge the courgettes into boiling salted water, blanching them for no more than five minutes. It is important not to over-cook them at this point; they’ll just end up all mushy and flaccid, and you don’t want that. Drain the courgettes and place them on a baking tray, brushing them liberally with melted butter. All this can be done ahead of time.

Next, get to work on the parsnips. Peel and chop two pounds of parsnips, boiling them in salted water until they are tender. Place them in a blender along with an ounce and a half of butter and five tablespoons of double cream. Season and then blitz them well, making sure there are no lumps (see below).

Reheat the courgettes in the oven at 220⁰C (400⁰C) for about five minutes. In the meantime, put the puréed parsnips into a piping bag equipped with an appropriate end. I used a star. Take the courgettes out of the oven and pipe the parsnips in an attractive fashion into the courgette boats.

I have to admit it was good fun doing this bit, though that bag was pretty hot! The main problem was that there was a few lumps of parsnip that kept getting stuck in my piping star. Cue parsnip explosions as the pressure built up in the forefront of my bag. I’m surprised no one lost an eye.

The boats await the rest of the dinner…

#311 Courgette and Parsnip Boats. Well I have to say I did like them. The parsnip was rich and creamy, which was set-off well by the blander courgette. I do wonder if just having a ragout of courgettes and some puréed parsnips made separately wouldn’t be simpler, or indeed better. What I really find odd about this receipt is that Jane Grigson singled this one out as a highlight. I’m sure Julia Childs had some better recipes than this one. 6/10.

#294 Preserved Spiced Oranges (Part II)

Do you remember that time I lived in Texas? It seems like an age away, but it was only three months ago that I packed up my stuff and headed for Missouri. I remember gingerly packing my tins and bottles of various foods, hoping they wouldn’t get broken in the move. Amongst them were the jars of the Preserved Spiced Oranges I made in Maytime. I decided it was about time to try them. I admit I was putting them off rather – the last orange-based recipe was Soyer’s Orange Salad, which basically slices of raw orange sat in brandy, and it shall not be made again.

Anyways, these orange slices are to be served with hot or cold pork, duck, ham – I expect goose too. I decided roast a duck to mark the occasion of opening up a jar of these oranges. Oddly, there is no recipe for roast duck in English Food. Therefore, as it is an omission, I shall be adding my own recipe to the other blog (and here is the link). Though it is worth mentioning that I used a bit of the syrup from the jar to flavour my gravy. Grigson also mentions that the leftover syrup makes a great sauce for duck.

#294 Preserved Orange Slices. Well I do wish I hadn’t left trying these for so long, for they were delicious! The oranges had become very tender, without any bitterness at all. They were wonderfully warmingly sweet with the now well-infused cinnamon, cloves and mace. All that sugar and spice was cut beautifully by the white wine vinegar. Good work, Griggers! 8.5/10.

#310 Smoked Mackerel

There are ingredients for recipes in the book that I really thought I wouldn’t be able to find, and one of those is smoked mackerel. Smoked mackerel was a new addition to English cuisine at the time of writing English Food and these days it is quite easy to find in supermarkets. So why is there a problem? Well, Griggers says to keep away from the hot-smoked (i.e. cooked) mackerel as she says it often ends up as mush; no, only cold-smoked mackerel will do. When I lived in Britain, I had no luck finding anywhere that sells it. However, here in Saint Louis, as I was having a walk around Global Foods – a large international food market – what did I happen upon just sat there in the refrigerator as bold as brass? Yes, a large cold-smoked mackerel. It is amazing what you find when you’re not looking. It turns out that cold-smoked mackerel is very popular in Eastern Europe. It obviously didn’t catch on that well in England, though Griggers gets full marks for trying to push it.

Like many recipes in the Cured Fish section of the Fish chapter, this isn’t really a recipe, as there is no cooking involved, it’s really advice on how best to serve it.

First you need to fillet the fish, removing any bones, and arrange pieces of the fillet on a plate. I was pretty impressed with my presentation here; I’m not very good at that sort of thing normally. She suggests serving the mackerel with lemon quarters and brown bread and butter. Because there was no cooking involved, I felt it was a bit of a cop-out recipe, so I baked some bread myself. Jane also suggests making a gooseberry sauce flavoured with horseradish. There is zero chance of finding gooseberries here in Missouri so I couldn’t do that part, but it was just a suggestion, so I reckon I can let myself off…

#310 Smoked Mackerel. A delicious fish it was, no wonder Grigson wanted to get us all eating it. It was very much like eating smoked sashimi, which is certainly not a bad thing. It was much more firm and flavoursome than smoked salmon, which can often be weirdly gelatinous in its texture. The smoky flavour was excellent and bona fide; it smelled as though it had just been snatched from the smokehouse. I think cold-smoked mackerel might catch on these days; sushi is popular and people are much less likely to turn their noses up at raw (though perfectly-cured) fish. Hopefully it might get a second chance. 7/10.

#309 Sticky Toffee Pudding

Sticky toffee pudding has got to be one of the best – if not the best – of all English desserts. It is quite a recent invention – a chap called Francis Coulson cooked it up, as it were, in 1948. For a pud that is just over 60 years old, it has become such a cornerstone of English cooking I cannot imagine life without it. It was created as an antidote to the lean post-war rationing, and was packed full of butter, brown sugar, cream and dates. Many people thought this was too much of an extravagance and were quite shocked by its richness. Curiously, Francis Coulson was the first hotelier in England to include a hairdryer in every room. Don’t say I never give you interesting facts.

Because the sticky toffee pudding is such a treat, I have been saving the recipe for a special occasion, and as Hugh was over in St Louis on a visit, I thought it very appropriate. I also invited some mates from work for some drinks too. I had never made one before, and crossed my fingers that it would be as delicious as the ones I have eaten in restaurants or purchased from the excellent Cartmel Village Shop in the Lake District. Good though the Village Shop is, have a go at making one yourself. You will not be disappointed.

Begin by greasing a 7 inch square cake tin with butter. Chop 6 ounces of stoned dates, place in a pan and pour half a pint of boiling water over them. Bring to a boil and then take off the heat and stir in a level teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda and leave it be whilst you get on with the cake mixture.

Cream together 2 ounces of softened butter with 6 ounces of caster sugar. Next, beat two egg and add them to the butter and sugar in stages. Fold in 6 ounces of self-raising flour, then the dates and their juices and half a teaspoon of vanilla extract (not essence, people!). Pour the mixture into the cake tin and bake for 30 minutes at 180°C (350°F).

Whilst it bakes, make the sticky toffee sauce by melting together in a saucepan: 7 ounces of soft dark brown sugar, 6 tablespoons of double cream, 4 ½ ounces of butter and half a teaspoon of vanilla extract. Simmer for around three minutes until a luscious sauce develops.

When the pudding is cooked, pour and spread a little of the sauce over it and put in the oven for a further 5 minutes. Cut the pudding into squares and serve it hot with more of the toffee sauce. Personally, I like it with either double cream or vanilla ice cream.

#309 Sticky Toffee Pudding. Without a doubt, the most delicious pudding from the book so far. The cake had become dark and sticky; the brown sugar preventing it from being too sickly. So good that I insist you go out and make this for yourself – no bought pudding could be as good as this. Fantastic, fantastic, fantastic 10/10.

Neil Cooks Grigson is 4!

Hello there.
I just realised today that it is Neil Cooks Grigson’s 4th birthday! I am so terrible at remembering these things – if I had been a bit more observant I would have done a nice spread. Oh well never mind. At least I get the chance to say a big thanks to everyone who reads and comments on the posts, I get such nice feedback from people and that always spurs me on.

I am two-thirds of the way through the project now, so I suppose there’s still another couple of years of blogging this book at the very least!

The blog is going to be quiet over the next few weeks, but I have great plans coming up for October…. watch this space…

#308 Walnut Biscuits

The blog has been a little quiet of late because of a combination of business and broken car. This means that I’ve not been able to explore St Louis’s butcher’s shops, markets et cetera anywhere near as much as I’d hoped this month. However, there are still a few simp recipes to do in the book and this is one of them. I had hoped to not do any recipes from the Teatime chapter of the book because I have done so many and there are so many under-represented chapters. However, beggars cannot be choosers, so I made these walnut biscuits that are very similar to the sugar thins I made ages ago. Don’t feel guity about eating a load of these either; walnuts have more antioxidants than any other nut. You might end up a fat little piggy, but you’ll have none of those pesky free radicals aging the skin of your three chins.

Start off by creaming together seven ounces of softened butter with five ounces of caster sugar. Next, beat in a large egg and then eight ounces of self-raising flour and three ounces of chopped walnuts.

Spoon a third of the mixture onto a rolled out piece of cling film and roll it up tightly to form a sausage shape that is about 2 inches in diameter.

Repeat with the rest of the mixture. Put the sausages of dough in the fridge to harden up over-night. You can freeze them like this too.

Next day, peel away the cling film and slice up the dough thinly and place on baking sheets. Bake for no more than ten minutes 190°C (375°F).

Griggers reckon they go well with coffee, and I am sure they do, but as I am not allowed to drink coffee anymore (Doc’s orders), it’ll have to be a tea.

#308 Walnut Biscuits. A nice, crisp biscuit that is sweet and crumbly; it certainly would go with unsweetened coffee or tea. The only problem with them is that there weren’t enough walnuts. I would go to four or maybe five ounces of walnuts. 7/10

#307 Mashed Potato with Dulse

Nobody really eats dulse, or any other seaweed, in England these days, though they used to. It is a pity because I do like the stuff. It seems to be popular still in Ireland though; my friend Evelyn often brings back a bag of it whenever she visits home and I like to steal a few pieces.

Dulse had been eaten for over one thousand years in North-Western Europe, the ancient Celtic Warriors of old ate dulse as they were marching and during the seventeenth century, and British sailors used it to prevent scurvy (although it was actually originally used as an alternative to chewing tobacco).

Its popularity in Ireland as well as Scotland led to dulse becoming liked in the USA too when they immigrated over the pond, although none of my American friends seem to have heard of it.

The Dulse Gatherers by Willaim Marshall Brown, 1863-1936

The dulse industry has obviously died a bit of a death in England and the rest of the UK and Ireland compared to days of yore. Charles Dickens, writing in 1858, reminisces about childhood holidays in Aberdeen where there were often over a dozen ‘dulse-wives’ selling dulse:

[O]f all the figures on the Castlegate, none where more picturesque than the dulse-wives. They sat in a row on little wooden stools, with their wicker creels placed before them on the granite paving stones. Dressed in clean white mutches, or caps, with silk-hankerchiefs spread over their breasts, and blue stuff wrappers and petticoats, the ruddy and sonsie dulse-women looked the types of health and strength… Many a time, where my whole weekly income was a halfpenny, a Friday’s bawbee, I have expended it on dulse, in preference to apples, pears, blackberries, cranberries, strawberries, wild peas and sugar-sticks.

He recalls a conversation:

A young one would say: “Come to me, bonnie laddie, and I’ll gie ye mair for yer bawbee than any o’ them.”

An old one would say: “Come to me, bonnie laddie, and I’ll tell what like yer wife will be.”

“Yer dinner ken yerself.”

“Hoot aye – I ken brawly: she’ll hae a head and feet, an mou’, and eyen, and may be a nose, and will be as auld as me, if she lives as lang.”

“Aye: but ye gie me very little dulse for my bawbee.”

“Aye,” replies the honest woman, adding another handful, “but sic a wife is weel worth mair siller.”

The dulse-wives exploded into laughter, when the woman suggested some one like herself, as the ideal wife which youth is doomed always to pursue and never to attain.

Oh! those dulse-wives.

Anyway, enough prattle, time for the recipe:

It could be easier, really. First, scrub and then boil some potatoes in their skins without adding any salt. Remove the skins and mash them. Next, crumble the dried dulse and fry it in olive oil – you’ll need a quarter of an ounce of dulse for every pound of potatoes used. This takes just a few seconds. Add the oil and dulse to the spuds and mix, mashing in some extra olive oil if need be.

Serve with lamb (as I did), beef, chicken or fish.

#307 Mashed Potato with Dulse. Well this was good mash, but there wasn’t much flavour of dulse in there. It did give the potatoes an attractive green colour though. I thought it strange that the recipe asked for olive oil rather than butter – olive oil was not used that much when English Food was first written in 1974. It would have been most likely found in chemist’s shops, where it was used to remove ear wax. 5/10

#306 Mint Sauce

Ah, mint sauce. I love mint sauce, but have never actually made it myself. Mint sauce is, of course, the sauce to go with roast lamb, especially during the summer months. Though, I remember as a child when I used to go swimming with my Dad on a Sunday to Morley Swimming Baths, I always had a chip butty smothered in mint sauce straight afterwards.

The piquant sauce goes so well with fatty or rich foods. St Hildegarde, a German spiritualist nun of the early Middle Ages, said this of mint: “Like salt, when used sparingly, it tempers foods…[M]int, added to meat, fish or any other food, gives it a better taste and is a good condiment; it warms the stomach and ensures good digestion.”

I reckon that this is true, and by adding somesweetness and mild vinegar, you can get away with using it more than sparingly.

St Hildegard (1098-1179) depicted having a nice sit down

Griggers emphasizes that this sauce must be made with freshly boiled water and wine vinegar, not malt as it is far too harsh. We always used malt vinegar in our house when ‘diluting’ the thick sauce that came out of a jar. Let’s see how the proper stuff tastes like…

Chop up enough mint leaves to fill a measuring jug to the quarter-litre mark. Add three tablespoons of boiling water, stir and let the mint infuse into the water. When it is just warm, stir in three level teaspoons of sugar and four tablespoons of wine vinegar (any kind, though I went with red, as that’s all there was!). Stir to dissolve the sugar and add more sugar of vinegar if you like. I found the amounts given to be right on the button, myself.

#306 Mint Sauce. Excellent, excellent excellent! Sweet, sour and wonderfully aromatic. I am never, ever going to buy mint sauce again. Go and make some. 10/10