Most Brits associate mincemeat with Christmas – its intoxicating mix of fruit, spices, booze, nuts and mixed peel provide Pavlovian stimuli, stirring memories of cherubic choirs a-caroling, roasted poultry, and the Queen’s speech – whereas I associate it with Easter, because it was always around then that we finally ran out of mince pies. I use the term “ran out” quite deliberately, as mince pies were the kind of thing that, growing up, were considered within the realm of “supplies”, so numerous were they. Every year in early December, my industrious mother would make at least six, but often as many as ten, dozen individual mince pies, fashioned lovingly from homemade mincemeat she had prepared several months in advance.

These seasonal confections then proceeded to appear on the table each and every mealtime, during tea breaks, whenever we had company over and any other time people were sat sitting and might be persuaded to have a smackerel of something, until everyone was thoroughly sick of the sight of them. Towards the end of March, the sight of the poor, battered-looking stragglers, that had been taken in and out their box so many times that their pastry shells were all dented and crumbly, was particularly sad.

The derivation of the word mincemeat, which today contains no minced meat, is Medieval, from a time shortly after Marco Polo had returned from the East, and every cook worth his salt was finding new ways to disguise and preserve rotten provisions with the spices he popularized. Adding cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves to ground meat, dried fruits, candied peel and chopped nuts before soaking the whole lot in high octane liquor must have been a hit at the time, which probably speaks more to the concurrent lack of fresh meat than to whether this was, in fact, a delicious preparation. Either way, it caught the imagination of a nation, and though the ground meat has largely been dropped, the tradition of using these spices to perfume pie filling continues strongly.

Another reason mincemeat was such a hit way back when is because once made, it can be expected to keep, unrefrigerated for as long as 2 years – something my mother bore in mind, as she often made hers over the first weekend of the New Year giving it ample time to “improve” over the next 12 months. Throughout the year, she would occasionally rouse it from its slumbers, turning it over and adding a touch more brown sugar or booze as she deemed necessary. Suffice it to say that by the time Easter came around, and the last mince pies were served, their mincemeat contents was nearing its second birthday, and was so highly perfumed that to inhale deeply close to a warmed mincer was to risk singed nose hairs.

Following my mother’s established tradition, I was well prepared, having put together my mincemeat last January, and fed it occasionally throughout 2011, so that it was rich and boozy by the time the Holidays arrived. Unfortunately, the energetic screams of our firstborn put paid to any intentions I may have had of making batches of personal mince pies before Christmas, so I had plenty of mincemeat leftover to ring in the New Year with. Inspired by a desire to produce something that people would actually eat before the next Christian festival hove into view, I quickly prepared this mincemeat stuffed quince. You could quite equally pair it with a vanilla custard/creme anglaise or, as I prefer, a whisky-laced whipped cream, but I lost my dander somewhere along the way and just shook some powdered sugar over it to evoke the wintry season instead.

I could have used apples in this recipe, but opted for quince largely because it’s one of those fruits that was, coincidentally, first popularized in the UK during Elizabethan times and has, rather sadly, since fallen out of favor. Brought originally from Asia and sometimes known by the moniker “love apple”, quince isn’t dissimilar in taste and texture to the apple — to which it is botanically related and which would make a fine substitute here — but when you’ve got the strains of “Good King Wencelas” with its frosty and feudal lyrics echoing in your mind, quince just feels right. [For more on quince, check out our friend Rachel Eats.]

Oven-baked quince are really, really good: rich, almost custardy in flavor and not overly sweet. A perfect dessert for the Holiday period, providing enough time is taken between courses. It’s probably not worth making a batch of mincemeat just for this purpose, but they are they dead easy and quick to pull together, and will be eaten in no time, allowing you and your family to leave Yuletide flavors safely behind you before the end of January.

Every now and then I’ll sit through one of those “secrets of the ancient world” shows on the History Channel. You know, the ones in which they have modern experts try to “decode” how the pyramids or the hanging gardens of Babylon were constructed using graphics that make you feel like you’re watching B-roll from The Da Vinci Code, and where, before every commercial break, there’s some sort of cliff-hanger like “Coming up, how this building ought never to have stood!”

So it was this past week, when shortly after the birth of our son, I was rocking him gently to sleep with one eye on a TV show about how Europe’s gothic cathedrals were built. Focusing on the massive limestone spires of the cathedrals of Notre-Dame d’Amiens, St. Pierre de Beauvais and Notre-Dame de Paris, this show was among the more interesting of its genre as not only did it deal directly with how modern architects are trying to prevent these houses of God from collapsing under their own weight, but it also brought back memories of our trip earlier this year to the Picardy region of northern France when we visited the first of these.

While the nave of St. Pierre de Beauvais did in fact collapse because of architectural over-reach, which its foreshortened and incomplete appearance reflects, Notre-Dame d’Amiens stands perilously intact as among the largest of its kind in the world. Sitting on the highest point in town, it can be seen, as was intended, from miles around. At night, it is so illuminated by floodlights that the visitor might be forgiven for thinking it is heralding an alien invasion.

When these giants of devotional architecture were being erected, they were in competition with one another for the title of the grandest monument in the country, but if competitive historic structural design isn’t your exactly bag, there is plenty else to appreciate about Amiens, including a feat of construction every bit as daring, but much more toothsome, than those stonemasons of yore managed. For Amiens, as Picardy in general, is famous for its duck products, and in particular for a fascinating multi-meat confection of duck, rabbit, pork and chicken livers all sealed-up crustily in a layer of savory pastry.

In truth, this was my train of thought. Fatigued as I was by several sleepless nights and hungry for something corporeally rewarding, the enduring might of colossal 13th-century cathedrals was far less intriguing than Jane Grigson’s recipe for pâté en croûte d’Amiens. Moreover, I was even more drawn to it because its preparation seemed to be easy enough for my addled senses to follow. Even after butchering and stripping the duck and rabbit carcasses, it didn’t feel like a lot of work, nor did the very basic pastry recipe cause any pain, persuading me, momentarily, that perhaps this parenting lark isn’t so tough after all.

However, pulling the rich, golden-brown terrine from the oven, and hearing my mother-in-law comment that in spite of the recent arrival of our firstborn I was willing to waste time preparing such a dish in place of a easy greasy take-away dinner, I snapped at her rather meanly, that given the level of the strain I was under, and some fried crap in a tray just wouldn’t cut it. I subsequently apologized, and had my nerves not been so frayed by weariness, I would have replied much more civilly, perhaps saying that in this pâté en croûte, I, like the structural engineers on the History Channel, had found a temporary solution to crushing gravity.

The basic premise of William Alexander’s recent book, 52 Loaves, like his first title The $64 Tomato, is that the author becomes so obsessed with a particular project, in this case creating (and growing wheat for) the perfect loaf of country bread, that he devotes a year (hence the title) and a great deal of energy and money, in the pursuit of his goal.

I’ll leave aside the obvious shades of mid-life crisis that dominate the book’s context, and I’ll ignore the far-too-frequent-for-comfort discussions of Alexander’s marital relations that I feel like he included to appear less of a nerd than a bread-obsessed IT director might otherwise, and focus instead on the fact that, as with many quests, his journey ultimately became more important than his goal. Alexander’s aim may have been to master the art of baking au levain country loaves at home, but in the course of his year-long peregrinations across North America, and to Morocco and France, and wittily transcending his middle-aged, obsessive-compulsive suburban dad identity, he finds much more than a faultless bread recipe, becoming a fount of fascinating knowledge and experience about life and human history.

Many of us, I’m sure, secretly dream of jacking in our workaday lives in the urban rat-race and retiring to a country town to bake delicious breads (or insert artisan career of choice), but Alexander disabuses the reader of this romantic notion through his own strenuous baking experiences as a boulanger for forty monks at the Norman abbey of St. Wandrille. Certainly, hobbyist bread bakers can learn a great deal from the author’s efforts, and benefit from the distilled information he provides in the form of recipes in the appendices, but for me, the most interesting aspect of 52 Loaves is that it raised a thorny issue Michael Steinberger also makes in his recent book Au Revoir to All That, that I was reading concurrently, namely that in France, the country many of us believe to be ground-zero for all that is good in bread baking (not to mention gastronomy in general), there is hardly a decent loaf to be found.

Projecting his theory that a 1,300 year old abbey must be the place to find (and make) artisan country breads, Alexander finds, to his dismay, that not only do none of the monks know how to bake but that even obtaining the correct kind of flour and yeast is nigh-on impossible. Echoing a  situation Steinberger also laments, Alexander questions how things got this way as he finds himself smuggling pots of his wild yeast starter into France when traditionally all the knowledge and great products have been coming the other way.

Of course, recently the French have become a convenient punchline in America for all manner of jokes about their military prowess, supposed lack of backbone and preference for industrial action over actual hard work, and one might be forgiven for thinking Steinberger is cashing in on that incipient anti-Gallic sentiment to herald the demise of the only areas in which the French have typically led the Anglo-Saxon world: food, wine, and artisanal production thereof. In fact, Steinberger is a self-declared Francophile whose enviably thorough research at many of the finest tables, markets, farms and vineyards in France must have caused him terrible distress as he found that a disastrous combination of a poor economy, confounding government regulations and a saddening disregard for traditional French food culture have led to a serious decline in gastronomic excellence.

Alexander notes the irony of  an American computer guy teaching French monks how to bake bread, and Steinberger points to the French Culinary Institute’s 2006 Gala hosted by a bevy of Spanish chefs and not a single Frenchman as evidence of the “end of France”, but it is, all the same, hard to believe that an entire nation’s cultural identity is vanishing to such an extent that hobbyist Americans and a little competition from a resurgent southern neighbor have supplanted centuries of tradition. Indeed, one of the underlying biases of both books is that we in America (and Britain), who have recently emerged from a centuries-long gastronomic Dark Age and have finally embraced the notion that food coming from small, craft producers is better in myriad ways than that of the industrial conglomerate (something we owe in no small measure to our Gallic cousins), are somehow now able to preach this message back to the French and that the joke is on them.

Certainly, Steinberger’s book is persuasive and raises legitimate concerns about how government regulation of cheese making is precipitating the extinction of some of France’s most famous lait cru, or raw milk, cheeses, but I can’t help averring that those who live in glass houses should not throw stones. While USDA regulations still rule out the importing of French raw milk cheeses, not to mention actively discouraging domestic production thereof, there is comparatively little hope of their persistence here or there. Moreover, if it is the attraction of McDonald’s and Wonderbread that is behind the decline in traditional French bistrots and artisanal country loaf baking, then who is to blame – the country who popularized both and, now, finding itself now saturated and obese  as a result, is looking to export them to maintain share prices, or lower middle-class French families struggling to make ends meet in a global economic downturn?

If there is a message to be taken combined from both titles it is perhaps an obvious one, that wherever one finds oneself (to a greater or lesser degree depending on location), and whether it be haute cuisine, organic wheat flour or artisanal raw milk cheese, fine food remains a bourgeois passion really only available to those whose considerable purchasing power offers the option to choose. Evidently, a world where delicious, nutritious, locally-grown and organic foods are available to all is the ideal and a goal worth striving for, but until, through government intervention or other means, and especially problematic in a persistently bad economy, these food stuffs are price competitive with the products of industrial agro-business, it is too early to start congratulating ourselves for having seen the light and pointing out the fault in others in the grip of lower-grade processed foods.

Being the innate pessimist that I am, watching a small boat being knocked around like a dodgem car on the rollicking, blue-grey seas at the normally placid Jersey Shore this past weekend put me in mind of the Costa de Muerte, the coast of death, on Spain’s north-west coast, where Galician fisherman have taken their lives in their hands for generations. [In a quirk of editorial fate, I may, unwittingly, have taken inspiration for this flight of fancy from the cover (then unopened) of this month's Bon Appetit, but as you will see, if you persevere, there is a mite more detail below than Barbara Fairchild typically provides.]

The ocean’s bounty has never been translated into material riches in that part of Spain, and even in modern times, in spite of renewed interest centered around its albariño and mencia wines, artisanal cheeses, and gooseneck barnacles, it remains comparatively impoverished. Consequently, Gallegos have, for generations, cast their fortunes in the wind and sought better lives for themselves in other parts of Spain and the New World, including Brazil, Uruguay, Venezuela, Argentina, and Cuba.

Interestingly, and this is mostly unrelated, during researching this post, I learned that Fidel Castro’s father was one such Galician emigrant. His mother was also of Galician descent. In fact, Castro is a common Galician family name that is derived from the circular stone-built houses or “castles” of the Castreña — the Celtic Bronze Age culture that left a number of characteristic walled villages across the region. [Ironically, of course, Galician heritage is perhaps the only thing that the communist Fidel shared with his fascist counterpart Francisco Franco, but it was enough for the former to take up an invitation from the-then leader of Spain to visit their shared "home" region in the 1960s.]

The late 19th century marked the beginning of mass Galician emigration to the New World, and an unknown, but significant, number of Gallegos emigrated to Argentina and Uruguay during this period. Today, the two New World cities with the greatest number of people of Galician descent are those countries’ respective capitals, Buenos Aires and Montevideo, so much so, that it is not uncommon for Porteños to refer to all Spaniards as “Gallegos”.

Regular visitors to this blog will, perhaps, recall last April’s post about Argentine pizza which ventured a sociological theory on the impact Italian immigrants have had on the culture and food of their adopted country. It is just possible that I overstated things a little. You see, beyond its magnificent meats, Argentinian cuisine’s next most famous item is not, as I said, its pizza or pasta, but its empanadas. To explain this, I had originally intended to embark on a lengthy discussion of how Galician immigrants were behind the development of the iconic Argentine empanada. Sadly, I could find no evidence whatsoever to support this hypothesis, especially since Argentine empanadas resemble more closely the typical Spanish empanadilla than the much larger Galician empanada, and were likely to have been popular in Argentina long before Gallegos arrived en masse. Instead, a brief description of how we came across Galician empanadas in a veritable sea of Argentine-style pies during our stay in Buenos Aires last year will have to suffice. Sorry about that.

We snacked almost constantly on empanadas with a variety of fillings throughout our ten days in Buenos Aires, and began taking their quality and ubiquity mostly for granted. It was only later on in our visit when we came across Pizzeria la Americana (aka La Reina de las Empanadas), an established bakery and cafe a block from the Palacio del Congreso de Argentina, that we realized not all empanadas are created equal. In this giant place that takes up most of a city block, a bevvy of savory pastries, large and small, sat glowing warmly under spotlights behind glass screens. These piles of regular small empanadas beckoned, crustily, at us, and we would have reverted to habit and ordered a slew of them had we not spied some giant pies on individual cake stands next to them. We hadn’t seen anything like these before — two or more inches thick, baked to a shiny golden patina and filled with, among other things, greens, boiled eggs and ham — yet they were also described as empanadas. What were they?

Even more confusingly, one of the large ones was labelled “pascualina”, a moniker for pies we had come across only once before, and then in Genoa, to describe that city’s special Easter variation of the spinach/chard and ricotta torta de bietole. Could these pies be variations on that? We weren’t sure, and couldn’t summon enough of our tourist Spanish to ask what might turn into something of a lengthy and garbled question about nomenclature, semantics and gastronomic anthrolopology.

Argentina’s ethnic mix has contributed to a unique South American melding of Iberian and Italic culture and cuisine, in which a pizzeria could quite legitimately describe itself as the queen of the empanada, while simultaneously serving Genoese-influenced Galician specialties without breaking stride or encouraging skepticism from potential customers. We were momentarily confused by it all, but decided there was nothing to do but roll with it, and so ordered a couple of giant slices of the empanada Gallega de pollo, which turned out to be a delicious, if over-generous, appetizer for our subsequent lunch at one of the city’s oldest Italian restaurants.

Neither of us had ever had a pie quite like this before. It didn’t really resemble the free-form tuna and sardine empanadas I’d tried in Santiago de Compostela and Vigo years ago, nor was it like an American-style pot pie we’re so familiar with, brimming with sauce and chunky vegetables. With a bready, pizza-like crust, top and bottom, and baked in a dish about the same dimensions as a deep-pan pizza, the filling was a moist and peppery combination of chicken, sauted greens, onions and red pepper. It was absolutely delicious and we have both been raving about it ever since, but everytime we’ve tried to make any of the many variations on Galician empanadas, we’ve failed to produce anything similar, nor have any recipes for Argentine empanadas worked out the right way.

In truth, the, what I’m going to call, Argentine-style empanada Gallega that we did make, wasn’t quite as good as the one we ate in Buenos Aires. The dough was too firm, not bready enough, and I should have tried using a modified pizza dough instead, but the filling more than made up for its shortcomings. In place of chicken, we slow-roasted half a Long Island duck that we had left over in the freezer from the hand-rolled Tuscan pasta with duck ragu and mixed it with sauted kale, green pepper, garlic, smoked paprika (pimenton) and lots of onions.

Experimentation on this front will continue because I could usefully spend some more time beautifying my rather scruffy attempt at a decoration, but also because one empanada fed the both of us for dinner that night and for lunch three subsequent days, and it just got better with each passing meal. Feel free to mess around with the dough recipe to your heart’s content, just as we will when we make this again, and, of course, the filling is entirely up to you too. Duck is kind of a luxury, and chicken, tuna, sardines, boiled eggs, a variety of vegetables, or plain old ground beef, would be absolutely fine. You should also feel free, should you feel geeky enough, to develop your own specious theories about the development of various global cuisines. They probably won’t be any less likely than mine.

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We’re going to make this one short and sweet — the Phillies, my beloved Philadelphia Phillies, just couldn’t do it this year.  What was even worse was that they played the Yankees and I live in New York City in a new apartment building surrounded by Yankees fans.   I just couldn’t face to finish watching the final game as the Phillies handed their World Championship title to the team with not only the richest ball players (who have won the World Series 26 times before) but also to a team filled with wanna-be celebrities (ahem, A-Rod – here doing what he does best, looking in a mirror and kissing himself and, ahem, Jeter) and actual celebrity “fans” and girlfriends (if I had to see stupid Kate Hudson, Jay Z or Rudy Giuliani one more freaking time…).

Even though I slept with ear plugs in the night the Yankees won, despite my disappointment, I fell into a deep slumber with a belly full of smoky, spicy Chipotle Wings. A few weeks ago, Challenge Butter convinced us to take on some samples of their unsalted butter and create an appetizer using their product along with some Spice Island and OXO products that they so generously gave us.  It was a way for them to not only get the word out on their amazing product (unfortunately, it’s only available to buy in the Western part of the US) but also on a great sweepstakes they are running until December 31st, 2009 to win a 7-day trip to Montana.

So with sports on the brain and the cooler weather coming in, we dusted the wings with some of the Spice Island spices and baked them Alton Brown-style till they crisped up, then tossed them in a blend of my obsession, La Morena Chipotle Sauce, some Tabasco chipotle-flavored hot sauce and some melted Challenge Butter. Dipped in some fennel-seed spiked Ranch dressing and the worries of my team losing the big game began to fade away – even if it was only temporary.

Perhaps the day that both our teams (Manchester United & Philadelphia Eagles) won unlikely decisive victories in the realm of competitive sports, is the best day to dwell on the recent personal glory of our seafood soufflés staying up. However – even if (quite sensibly) you don’t give a rat’s ass about sports – anyone who has tried making them before knows the all-too-brief satisfaction of the fully puffed soufflé, and, though, we’ve experienced the saddening deflation of failure, we now also know the pride and joy that is a fully erect soufflé.

And, lest you think that we traded our heroes for ghosts, this was none other than a snorting, full-on multi-fish and cheese souffle that not only satisfied our desire for classic French cookery, but provided much-needed stomach-lining on a day that required some serious daytime drinking.

Even if you’re not planning on a full day of sports-related drinking, these souffles are a fantastically light, yet rich, first course, or a great light main with bread and an arugula side-salad, not to sound all non-contact-sports metrosexual on you.

We’d like to thank Taste With the Eyes whose comté soufflé gave us inspiration for this dish. 

Mixed Fish & Gruyere Soufflé with Parsley Sauce (serves 4)

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp unsalted butter
• 2 tbsp all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup (6oz) milk
• 3 eggs, separated
• 1 cup grated Gruyere cheese (Emmentaler or Comté would also work well)
• 1 cup assorted cooked shellfish (shrimp, scallops, mussels, + white fish, if you like)
• 1 bunch flat-leaf (Italian) parsley, chopped
• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 2 tbsp water
• 1 good pinch salt

Recipe

• Cook off your chosen seafood and allow to cool. Drain of as much cooking fat as possible.
• In a high-sided saucepan make a bechamel sauce with butter, flour and milk.
• Remove pan from heat and beat in egg yolks, one at time.
• Stir in grated cheese until fully combined, then stir in fish. Allow to cool.
• In a separate bowl, beat egg whites until until soft peaks are achieved.
• Gently fold in 1/3 egg whites into bechamel and continue adding beaten egg whites until completely combined.
• Pour mixture into buttered soufflé dishes until 3/4 full.
• Cook immediately for 20 minutes at 400F (210C), then increase to 450F (230C) for 8-10 minutes or until fully-risen and browned on top.
• Add parsley, water, oil and salt to blender. Blitz until consistency of vinaigrette. Pour into squeezy bottle and squirt gaily over your fish soufflé.

It’s always fun to be with my British husband and celebrate the 4th of July. Some of his favorite questions he been asked many times since moving to America to be with moi is, “So, Jonny, what’s Thanksgiving like in England!?” or “How do you guys celebrate the 4th of July in England!?”. Such silly questions – some of us need to be reminded of our history sometimes! But every year around this time my family loves to wave flags (nobody waves a flag better than an upstanding American citizen!), laugh and say “nanny-nanny-boo-boo” in my poor British husbands face. It’s a real sweet, bonding moment and Jonny hasn’t gone postal on our a$$es yet!

Just to remind all of you US-history-challenged readers, Americans celebrate the 4th of July each year commemorating the final f-you to the British in declaring our independence from them. So, celebrate the day with a cook out, some bunting, fireworks, sparklers, a Brit to make fun of and this delightfully delicious Nectarine Tart. The reason why this is so delicious and weirdly light is because the filling isn’t made with custard, it’s actually made with simple whipped cream mixed with Cointreau and topped with poached nectarines. Maybe you can swap the nectarines out for some raspberries, cherries or strawberries and really make this a 4th of July spectacular! Super easy and very, very, very tasty, we cheated and used some frozen pastry (gasp!!! Y’all know i’m a cruddy baker!), but feel free to use your favorite pastry recipe. We took this straight from a wonderful book, “When French Women Cook: A Gastronomic Memoir” by, Madeline Kamman. HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY – HAVE A WONDERFUL WEEKEND!

TARTE AUX BRUGNONS (NECTARINE TART)

Ingredients:

• Your favorite pastry recipe or thawed ready-made pastry
• 8 nectarines
• handfull of berries (we used blackberries)
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 2 tbsp. confectioners sugar
• 4 tbsp. Cointreau, triple sec or Kirsch

What to do:

1. Roll our your pastry to fit a 9-inch pan. Blind bake for 10 minutes at 425 degrees. Remove from oven and allow to cool.
2. Bring a pot of water to a boil and immerse nectarines in for 1 to 2 minutes, allowing you to peel the skin off more easily. Peel and cut in quarters to remove the stone then slice into thin pieces.
3. Make a syrup with 1/2 a cup of water and the sugar and poach the nectarine pieces all together. Allow to cool.
4. Whip the cream gradually adding the sugar and 1 tablespoon of the liquor at a time. When the cream is stiff, fill the pastry shell with it.
5. Top with cooled nectarine syrup and then the blackberries. ENJOY!

Check out these other posts you may enjoy:

• AUTHENTIC CARNE ASADA TACOS
• CRANBERRY FLAPJACKS
• BLOOD ORANGE MARGARITAS
• LIDIA’S LAMB CHOPS (Lamb Chops with A Mustard Anchovy Sauce)
• LEBANESE-SPICED LAMB OVER CRISPY PITA WITH CHICKPEAS, PINENUTS, POMEGRANATE SEEDS SMOTHERED IN GARLIC YOGURT SAUCE
• GNOCCHI DI PATATE WITH A BROWN BUTTER, SAGE, BREADCRUMB SAUCE

In Florence, and other parts of Tuscany, eggs florentine are not typically eaten at breakfast time, the Tuscans preferring the simplicity of coffee and a pastry or perhaps a grilled slice of saltless Tuscan bread, rubbed with garlic and olive oil. However, the basic notion of eggs and spinach is authentically Tuscan, and instead of poached eggs over wilted spinach, they are often baked together in a creamy, nutmeggy sauce and eaten as a side dish to a grilled or roasted meat.

And, with a lot of things we do on our blog, we feel the authentic version is better than the knock-offs and happily spinach is in season right now, so it’s both authentic and seasonal.

Initially, I was skeptical that this dish would be any good because spinach dishes are usually not that flavorful – with the spinach not offering much in the way of an identifiable taste. Not in this case though, where the spinach actually provides all the flavor and, surprisingly, a lot of almost crunchy texture, and the cream, eggs and butter provide the richness.

This, as an accompaniment to a great, rare bistecca alla fiorentina, would make for a delicious and decadent dinner, not dissimilar to the traditional American steakhouse classic of steak with a side of creamed spinach, but the addition of the eggs to this dish really puts it over the edge. You really can’t go wrong.

Baked Spinach with Eggs

Ingredients

1lb (500g) spinach, washed, but with stems on
1/2 cup heavy cream
3-4 medium eggs
1tbsp unsalted butter1tbsp grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese1tsp freshly grated nutmegsalt and black pepper to taste

Recipe

Pre-heat your oven to 350F / 175C.In a large saute pan, wilt the spinach gently in the butter. Three to four minutes is all it should really take.Then strain-off the spinach juices and reserve. Place spinach to a buttered oven-proof baking dish and distribute evenly.Add spinach juices and half the cream back in your pan and over low heat allow to reduce a little – until the cream is a pale green and starting to thicken. Then add nutmeg, salt and pepper to taste.Pour the rest of the cream over the spinach and make indentations in the spinach for your eggs. Crack eggs into indentations, then pour over the cream and spinach juice mixture before sprinkling the whole thing with parmesan cheese and some extra black pepper.Bake for 15-20 minutes or until bubbling and eggs are firm. Allow to come to room temperature before serving with your favorite cut of steak.

Thanks to Maxine Clark, The Flavors of Tuscany: Recipes from the Heart of Italy, from which this recipe was adapted.

Check out these other posts you may enjoy:

• PAPPA AL POMODORO (Tuscan Tomato and Bread Soup)
• TORTILLA ESPANOLA (Spanish Potato Omelet)
• PASTA (BUCATINI) WITH PISTACHIO SAUCE
• WHOLE FRIED SNAPPER WITH GARLIC AND PARSLEY SAUCE
• FETTUCCINE FRA’DIAVOLO WITH CRAB AND SHRIMP
• ROASTED PORK SHOULDER (Pernil) – The Quicker Version

In my mind though, any sweet recipe that goes up on this blog – no matter how easy – represents a victory since both my wife and I are poor bakers, so I’m posting this recipe for cranberry flapjacks anyway and to hell with the seasons!

Flapjacks remind me of my late mother as they were an old favorite of hers that she often made for when we came home from college or weekends, and we’d sit with her and catch up over flapjacks and a cup of tea. These turned out really well (they are dead easy to make) and I’m sure my mum would be proud of me.

UPDATE BY THE AMERICAN:  Just like I scratched my head in curious wonder when I first noticed that the English term for flapjack was very different from what I knew of flapjack,  so were many of our readers.  So, I realized we need to add a bit of history here.  According to research, in the US, the term flapjack dates back to the early 1600′s.  This is the second oldest term to describe what we also know as pancakes here in the US (which is the earliest term, coined around the 14th century).  We also have the good ‘ole American term johnnycake (Soprano’s fans?  Remember that hot scene between a sweaty, hairy fat Vito and his sweet Johnnycake near the motorcycle? Sexy!) or hoecake (love this one).  In the UK, a flapjack is a tray bake made of oats, fat and sugar and often syrup or honey.  They range from being soft and moist to dry and crisp (like this recipe) and are eaten as an alternative to a biscuit (cookie).  Also, a pancake in the UK is kind of different from our pancakes here (they are much thinner and lighter).  Check out our post on Pancake Day for some delicious UK pancake recipes.  To the English, a flapjack and a pancake are two completely different things.  To Americans, they are interchangeable.

Wikipedia does a good job of explaining the bottom line:  The word flap- meaning a tossed mixture and jack, an uncertain word suggesting a variety, imply any ingredients could be called a flapjack.  To me, this explains why the word flapjack can basically be anything that is both tossed and with a variety of ingredients.  Salad = Flapjacks?  I’m still confused.

Cranberry (Craisin) Flapjacks

Ingredients

• 3½ oz (100g) butter, plus a bit extra to grease your brownie pan
• 2½ oz (75g) light brown sugar (muscovado)
• 3 good tbsp runny honey
• 12oz (350g) porridge (Quaker) oats
• pinch of salt
• 3½ oz (100g) dried cranberries (craisins)
• 1 banana, mashed (optional)

Recipe

• Preheat oven to 350F (180C) and lightly butter a 10 x 10 or 10 x 12 inch brownie pan
• Melt butter gently in a saucepan and mix in sugar and honey.
• Then add oats and salt. Stir well.
• Add cranberries (and banana) and stir well again.
• Turn mixture into brownie pan and press down so surface is smooth and mixture is evenly spread.
• Bake for 20-25 minutes or until oats are golden brown and crispy.
• Allow to cool for 10 minutes, but cut into squares while still warm.
• Store in an airtight jar or tin. They keep very nicely and continue to develop their chewiness for a while.

Check out some other posts you may enjoy:

• BROILED MISO-GLAZED SALMON WITH SOBA NOODLES
• SANDWICH DE MERGUEZ (BAGUETTE FILLED WITH MERGUEZ SAUSAGE, FRENCH FRIES AND FRIED LEEKS)
• CREAMY LEMON PASTA
• TOAD-IN-THE-HOLE (Sausages Nested in Batter)
• ENSALADA DE CABRALES (Thin Sliced Apple and Cabrales Cheese Salad w/ Vinaigrette)
• AVGOLEMONO SOUP (Greek Lemon-Egg Chicken Soup w/ Orzo)

Jeffrey Steingarten famously declares in It Must Have Been Something I Ate that every time he is bored, he roasts a chicken. Calculating that he gets bored approximately once a week, this translates into 52 roast chickens a year and more than one thousand since he began as food critic at Vogue. That’s a lot of chicken, but it’s also a lot of practice in the art of roasting. Now, Steingarten goes on to say that roasting a chicken in the oven is little more than baking it, and that real roasting can only be done on a spit over a flame, which is perhaps true, but in the absence of a spit and fire, I think oven-roasting (baking) can produce a perfectly delicious roast chicken, and would refer you to the recent post “How to Spatchcock a Chicken” for a quick step-by-step.

Indeed, to my mind, (and to disagree with Mr. Steingarten, for once) there is one distinct advantage to oven-roasting vs. spit-roasting, namely, drippings, and drippings, like the crumbles in the corner of a bag of chips (crisps), are where the flavor is at. These drippings, you see, can be made into one of the most sublime of all cooking by-products, the gravy.

So, after washing and patting dry my bird, I stuffed its cavity with carrots, celery, onions, garlic, thyme, and lemon, before giving it a good rub all over with olive oil and a healthy sprinkling of salt. I then placed said bird in a dutch oven (le creuset) and leaving the lid off, put it in a 420F oven for forty minutes. After forty minutes, and with the bird looking perfectly golden and crispy, I turned the heat down to more placid 350F and let it roast for another hour before removing it and letting it rest a while out of the oven.

Before carving it, I removed the bird from the pot and took out the stuffing from the cavity, then drained all the juices out of the cavity into the pot where they mixed with roasting juices. Adding the cavity stuffing to the juices, along with about a pint of tap water, I turned up the heat and scraped the burnt bits off the bottom of the pan. I let the liquid reduce by about a third, stirring occasionally and crushing some of the vegetables a bit with my wooden spoon.

Nicely brown and beautifully redolent of chicken, thyme, lemon and the sweetness of roasted carrots, I strained the gravy and then pushed the solids through a sieve to add some body and flavor back in to it. Seasoning only slightly with salt and fresh pepper, I was proud to have made an absolutely fantastic, honest-to-goodness chicken gravy without recourse to stock, bouillon cubes or thickeners like corn starch. It was a moment in which I realized that just by following my instincts I had recreated the kind of gravy you’d commonly find at a good English restaurant or pub, or indeed, a good country French restaurant.

It was really quite an ordinary dinner – roast chicken, dauphinoise potatoes and a warm asparagus salad with fennel and celery tops, but with this gravy it became extraordinary — exactly the kind of restorative elixir that my body needed. “They” say that chicken soup contains something that makes you better when you’re sick, and I am sure that this chicken gravy had some of that goodness in it too. It was freshly made, flavorful and, well, chicken-y in a way that only chicken can really taste like chicken, and it made me feel wholesome without resorting to wheat germ, lentils and colonic irrigation.

Another interesting by-product of this dinner was a rather toothsome recipe for a potato and fennel gratin that I’m also inordinately proud of, perhaps because I didn’t work from a recipe, perhaps because I’m an asshole. Anyway, here’s how to do it:

Potato & Fennel Gratin
Ingredients

• 2 large or 3 medium waxy potatoes (yukon gold are best here) peeled, but left whole
• 1 large fennel bulb with tops trimmed and reserved for fennel salad
• 1/2 to 2/3 cup milk
• 2-3oz low moisture mozzarella, sliced thinly
• salt & pepper to taste

Recipe

• Preheat oven to 350F.
• Using a mandolin on the middle thickness setting, slice your potatoes and fennel.
• Lay out potatoes overlapping one another by about 3/4 slice (see photo below) in a layer in a baking dish.
• Then do the same thing with your fennel slices. This second layer will probably not be as neat as the first one, but that doesn’t really matter.
• Pour the milk over the vegetables but make sure milk does not cover them. Depending on the size of your dish, you may need a bit more or a bit less milk, but it should only come up to the bottom of the upper-most layer of vegetables.
• Season with salt and pepper.

• Cover dish with foil and place in oven for about half an hour.
• After this time, remove from oven and lay your mozzarella slices on top. Do not add too much cheese – be a little sparing.
• Return to oven and allow to bake for another twenty minutes or so, until cheese begins to puff and brown.
• Remove and allow to cool a bit before serving (cutting is easier when vegetables and cheese have firmed up a little).
• Serve with roast chicken on a Sunday night and calm the weekly apprehension at your impending return to work.

Check out these other posts you may enjoy:

• BRAISED PORK CHOPS WITH LIME AND OLIVES
• ENSALADA DE CABRALES (Thin Sliced Apple and Cabrales Cheese Salad w/ Vinaigrette)
• AUTHENTIC THIN-CRUST PIZZA
• BLACK, RED OR PINTO BEANS WITH CHORIZO AND CUMIN
• VEAL KIDNEYS WITH MUSHROOMS AND COGNAC
• CREAMY LEMON PASTA
• LIDIA’S LAMB CHOPS (Lamb Chops with A Mustard Anchovy Sauce)