Cookbooks

Homemade broth makes a world of difference for the better in any dish that calls for chicken broth. Happily, a light and flavorful one can be made with only chicken backs and wings and water, no other elements—carrots, onions, celery, herbs—required, and briefly simmered for one unattended hour. It’s worth making a large amount to have on hand because it stores well in the refrigerator under the protective layer of fat that solidifies on the surface when it is chilled. If the fat seal is not broken, the broth will keep for 3 weeks in the refrigerator. If you break the fat to use just part of the broth, reheat the remainder until the fat melts completely, then cool and refrigerate it, checking to be sure the fat seals the entire surface again. The broth can also be frozen for up to 6 months. In this case, the fat layer prevents ice crystals from forming across the surface. For thrift, I use backs and wings for broth. But, you can also employ legs, thighs, and breasts, use them to make the broth, then remove them to serve as part of another dish.

These are dead easy to make and have endless applications in the kitchen. Use them to baste or brown ingredients and they will add pizzazz and excitement to stews and roasts. Likewise, they will jazz up a panful of onions or other vegetables for a soup or sauce and impart character to fish dishes. Herb oils come into their own when drizzled over summer or winter salads; they are also excellent used in mayonnaises and dressings. The basic principle is to choose robust flavorings and leave them for long enough to impart their mighty characters to the oil. Always use a good-quality oil as your base (see pp. 30–31). In all cases, to prevent the oil from becoming rancid, store in a cool place and use within 6 months.

Contrary to what you might think, making a fine vegetable broth is not a matter of tossing any vegetable matter into a pot and boiling it up. The vegetables you start with need not be picture perfect, but starchy vegetables, such as potatoes, should not be part of the mix or the broth will turn out murky, and brassicas, like cabbage and broccoli, are also not good to use or the broth will not be clear tasting. Then, don’t stint on the amount of vegetables for the amount of broth you would like to wind up with. One tomato and one chard leaf do not a tasty broth make. There should be enough water so that the vegetables barely float, but not any more. Cook the broth until the vegetables are very soft but not disintegrating; this helps make a clear broth. Following is a mix and method I use to make a good-size batch of vegetable broth that is rich enough to serve on its own as a bouillon or use as a base for any soup.

These are dead easy to make and have endless applications in the kitchen. Use them to baste or brown ingredients and they will add pizzazz and excitement to stews and roasts. Likewise, they will jazz up a panful of onions or other vegetables for a soup or sauce and impart character to fish dishes. Herb oils come into their own when drizzled over summer or winter salads; they are also excellent used in mayonnaises and dressings. The basic principle is to choose robust flavorings and leave them for long enough to impart their mighty characters to the oil. Always use a good-quality oil as your base (see pp. 30–31). In all cases, to prevent the oil from becoming rancid, store in a cool place and use within 6 months.

These are dead easy to make and have endless applications in the kitchen. Use them to baste or brown ingredients and they will add pizzazz and excitement to stews and roasts. Likewise, they will jazz up a panful of onions or other vegetables for a soup or sauce and impart character to fish dishes. Herb oils come into their own when drizzled over summer or winter salads; they are also excellent used in mayonnaises and dressings. The basic principle is to choose robust flavorings and leave them for long enough to impart their mighty characters to the oil. Always use a good-quality oil as your base (see pp. 30–31). In all cases, to prevent the oil from becoming rancid, store in a cool place and use within 6 months.

There’s no reason to settle for the sorry excuse for bread crumbs available commercially. All you need to make your own is a food processor and some day-old bread. Since I use a lot of bread crumbs in my cooking, I use my freezer for stockpiling bits and pieces from unfinished loaves, eventually to be turned into crumbs. In fact, if I’m out of my freezer inventory, I deliberately “stale” fresh bread for crumb making by drying it out in a low oven until it’s no longer squeezable. The best bread for all-purpose crumbs is bâtard, ciabatta, or a similar artisanal French or Italian bread without seeds, walnuts, olives, or the like.

Season: More or less anytime. These are dead easy to make and have endless applications in the kitchen. Use them to baste or brown ingredients and they will add pizzazz and excitement to stews and roasts. Likewise, they will jazz up a panful of onions or other vegetables for a soup or sauce and impart character to fish dishes. Herb oils come into their own when drizzled over summer or winter salads; they are also excellent used in mayonnaises and dressings.The basic principle is to choose robust flavorings and leave them for long enough to impart their mighty characters to the oil. Always use a good-quality oil as your base (see pp. 30–31). In all cases, to prevent the oil from becoming rancid, store in a cool place and use within 6 months.

Season: June to November. These are very useful additions to the pantry as their distinctive flavors can revolutionize a simple salad dressing or sauce. The process is simple: aromatic herbs, flowers, or strong-flavored ingredients are steeped in vinegar for a period of time and are then strained out. The vinegar is then decanted into a sterilized bottle and sealed (see p. 125). Always pick leaves and flowers for steeping when they are dry and their perfume is at its best. Use cider vinegar or white wine vinegar–or perhaps try some delicate rice vinegar to give a hint of Asian flavor to the mix.

The bitter Seville orange is the most traditional and arguably the finest marmalade fruit of all. Only available for a few short weeks starting in mid-January, this knobbly, often misshapen orange has a unique aromatic quality and is very rich in pectin. However, you can use almost any citrus fruit to make good marmalade–consider sweet oranges, blood oranges, grapefruit, limes, clementines, kumquats, or a combination of two or three (see my suggested variations ). There are two basic ways of making marmalade. My first choice is the sliced fruit method, which involves cutting the raw peel into shreds before cooking. I find this technique produces a brighter, clearer result. However, the whole fruit method, in which the fruit is boiled whole before being cut up, is easier and less time-consuming. It tends to create a darker, less delicate preserve–but that, of course, might be exactly what you want. I’ve given you both methods here.

Season: more or less anytime. A good vegetable bouillon or stock can be the making of many a soup, risotto, or sauce. Preparing your own stock from scratch is easy enough–but it does take a little time, so an instant alternative is often welcome. The choice of vegetable bouillon powders and stock cubes on the market is pretty limited. There are one or two good products, but if you use them frequently, you might find an underlying uniformity creeping into your cooking. This is my solution. Whip up your very own souper mix–a concentrated paste of fresh vegetables simply preserved with salt. It’s quick and easy to make and the stock it produces is delicious. You can use just about any herbs or vegetables you like–the important thing is that they are fresh and taste as vegetable-y as possible. My preferred ingredients are indicated in this recipe, but you could also use young turnips, shallots, celery, rutabagas, beets, or peppers, as well as bay leaves, thyme, lovage, or mint–almost anything, really. Just bear in mind that the character of the stock will vary depending on the ingredients you choose. The following are prepared weights; i.e., the ingredients should be washed, trimmed, and peeled (where necessary).

Season: September to December. Hawthorn is a lovely tree that grows throughout the United States. Frothy white blossoms herald the beginning of summer, and the fading flowers later give way to clusters of blood-red berries, or haws. These swathe the trees from early autumn well into winter-sometimes even through to the new year. The peppery, lemony little berries are too tart to eat raw, but I love them cooked into this sweet-sour sauce. Hawthorn tends to fruit prolifically, so you should have little trouble gathering enough haws. Do avoid picking from roadside bushes, however, as these may have absorbed fumes and pollution (although, for some reason, they often seem to be laden with the biggest and juiciest berries of all!). Serve haw ketchup with rich meats such as venison or slow-roasted pork belly. It is also terrific drizzled over Welsh rarebit. My favorite way to enjoy this spicy sauce, however, is with a really good nut roast, served with a crisp green salad

Season: August to September. This is kitchen alchemy at its most exciting and rewarding: A mysterious-looking brew of dark elderberries, vinegar, and spices becomes a truly wonderful sauce, a secret weapon for the pantry that I don’t like to be without. According to tradition, pontack sauce is best used after 7 years, but I’m hard pushed to keep it for 7 months. Pungent, fruity, and spicy, it’s an unrivaled partner for winter stews, slow-roasted pork belly, or anything wild and gamy. Besides serving this sauce alongside meat dishes, you can add a couple of tablespoonfuls to sauces and gravies. The elderberry season is short and the berries are part of the hedgerow banquet for woodland birds, so don’t delay–gather them when you see them.

Season: July to September. Slow-roasted tomatoes provide a rich, intense base for this, my all-time favorite ketchup. The spices and seasonings I have used are good old-fashioned ones–those our grandmothers would have kept in their kitchens. However, if you like, you can fire it up by adding a couple of teaspoonfuls of ground chiles. Don’t expect the ketchup to be the same color as a commercial variety; it will be a warm orangey red color.

Season: May to June: Spotting the first tips of asparagus pushing their way above ground in late spring is one of the greatest moments of the growing year. Use a good but not really expensive olive oil (see p. 30). When the asparagus has been eaten, the flavored oil can be used to make a lovely salad dressing. You will need one jam jar that is about 8 inches high, with a capacity of about 16 ounces, and a second jar with a capacity of about 8 ounces.

Season: July to September: Harissa is a North African ingredient used to enhance many fish and meat dishes, as well as couscous and soups. I also like to use my version to make a fruity, fiery dipping sauce (see below) to serve with pork, fish, or prawns. The strength of the paste depends on the variety and quantity of chiles used. The chances are that this recipe, which I would describe as moderately hot, will merely tickle the palate of out-and-out chile freaks. But all you need do to make it more fiery is increase the amount of chiles, include more of their seeds (see below), or perhaps add one or two very hot little dried chiles.

Season: July to September. I love the gutsy flavor of these tomatoes and like to serve them as part of a crisp smoked bacon and beet salad or a hearty couscous salad with plenty of fresh cilantro. There are times, though, when I can’t resist eating them from the jar! Ideally, the fruit would be sun-dried, but slowly drying them in a very low oven achieves similar and very pleasing results.

Season: September to October. The raw flesh of the lumpy yellow quince is dry and disagreeably sour. However, once cooked, it becomes pink and highly perfumed. Lightly sweetened and combined with good fluffy cooking apples, such as Granny Smiths, it makes a delightful accompaniment for roast pork or duck. I also love this aromatic fruity sauce on a home-baked rice pudding.

Season: July to late October. This recipe comes from Liz Neville, a virtuoso preserves maker with whom I run the River Cottage Preserved courses. You can make it with any raspberry, but we particularly like to use the big autumn berries. Bottle a few and you can extend your raspberry eating well into the dark winter months. In an ideal world, the fruit for this preserve would be packed into the jars as you pick it from the canes. That may not be possible–but do make sure the fruit is in tip-top condition and handled as little as possible.

Season: July to August. The big, platelike leaves of the nasturtium plant (Tropaeolum majus) are abundant throughout the summer and often well into the golden months of autumn. With their peppery flavor, they make the perfect base for a fiery pesto. Add a sprig or two of garden mint, a few golden marigold petals, and some spicy nasturtium seeds and you have a wonderful sauce to stir into pasta, swirl on soups, or just smear in a sandwich. Pick the leaves on a warm, dry day–ideally, earlier in the summer, before the caterpillars have decided to feast on them. Whenever I make pesto, I replace the traditional Parmesan with a hard goat’s cheese, matured for a year. It makes an excellent alternative to Parmesan in all kinds of dishes.

Season: winter. It may seem somewhat unnecessary to preserve dried fruit, but I love having a few jars of this compote on the shelf. The once-shriveled fruits become plump and luscious and are quite delicious served alone for breakfast or with yogurt or crème fraîche as a dessert. I like to make this in early November, when newly dried prunes, figs, and apricots are available. Keep on the lookout for small, dried wild figs, which will plump up perfectly to their original shapely selves. The glistening black prunes from the Agen area in southern France are also key players–I prefer to use these un pitted because they infuse the compote with an almondlike essence. A simplified version of the oven method is used–everything is cooked and hot to start with, so the jars don’t need to be heated for an extended time in the oven.