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.

I often think that living in a small scruffy New York City apartment is akin to a pioneer life in a log cabin somewhere remote. Sure, the commute is easier, but the myriad quotidien affronts and man traps of a city existence certainly resemble the perils of life on the range.

This is never more true than in winter when leaving your apartment on an icy weekend is about as enticing as wading through thigh-deep snow while being pursued by a pack of ravening wolves. On the those days, when opening your front door results in a nasty swirl of city trash blowing across your threshold, there is nothing better to do than hole up and compensate for your super’s inattention to heating your building to legally established levels by braising something porky for however many hours it takes to chase the chill back, at least as far the verminious bathroom and its dripping condensation.

In this case, it was some seriously chunky pork neck bones – whose original owner must have been a champion of his breed – braised in a rosemary-scented Guinness broth. Typical of parts of the English Midlands where malty, hoppy ales abound and rare breed pigs grow fat on acorns, apples and whey, this is an ancient recipe and in it lie the origins of the famous baked bean dish that, when transposed to the rather more Puritanical colonies, banished the beer in favor of the sweetness of readily-available sugar coming up from the Caribbean, so becoming Boston baked beans. For those pioneers, the presence of such a stew on the table during a long Massachusetts winter must have been even more important than for us hard-pressed city dwellers today.

It is also very similar to a stew my Great Auntie Annie used to make when a crowd of family descended on her Solihull semi-detached so that the grandkids could spend the day riding around the garden on her husband’s 1/16th scale-model railway. It’s not clear to me how often Great Uncle Roger used his train when there were no young guests in the house, but I rather enjoy the idea that if you peeked through the box hedges of a quiet Birmingham suburb on any given weekday morning you might find a highly eccentric retiree rushing around his back yard on a toy train.

For we grandkids, all the excited shreaking and ducking under low hanging bushes as the train chugged around at a decent clip always left us red-faced and famished. My Great Aunt, the youngest of nine kids, knew instinctively how to cater for large groups of young ‘uns, stretching a cheaper cut of meat with white beans, potatoes, and iron-rich ale.

The quality of the final product relies greatly on the quality of the beer used in the braise. Lager is of no use here and light beer (if it is ever worth drinking) should be completely avoided. A fine malty and/or hoppy English-style brew that will give strength, depth and some sweetness to the stew is what you’re seeking. Auntie Annie used to use Flowers’ Original, a floral English ale (then) made in nearby Stratford-upon-Avon. Similarly, pork necks with plenty of connective tissue and marrow are ideal because the former breaks down to thicken the sauce and latter makes a simple and rustic dish somehow luxurious.

Of course, unlike life in the country where heating is controlled by the number of logs on the fire, your apartment heating is bound to come on, clanking and groaning itself into overdrive, just as you plate this dish, forcing you to sweat through it, and all night long in your bed, in spite of the open window. The following morning, perhaps only to escape the dry, oppressive internal conditions, the grey, freezing city will magically appear more inviting and your struggle on the subway marginally less onerous.

I’m not very old, but for much of my youth in the north west of England, it was almost impossible to find fresh foods that weren’t local. Today such a statement seems like an echo of Victorian times, but, literally, that’s how it was until a supermarket was built behind the Knutsford courthouse in the late 80s.

I often tell my wife about the cheese stall at the weekly market only kept five kinds of cheese – Cheshire, Cheddar, Lancashire, and sage Derby were ever present, with perhaps a Wenslydale reasonably common too. If anything as unusual as a Stilton, from distant Nottinghamshire, appeared, it would generate as much commotion among the town’s housewives, who elbowed their way to the front of the queue to catch a glimpse of this highly perfumed foreigner, as if Julio Iglesias showed up sporting his tennis shorts. My wife usually responds that I should count myself lucky because when she was young there were only four kinds of cheese at her local supermarket: white American, yellow American, cheddar and Swiss and had anything else been available it would have been looked upon with extreme suspicion. Touché.

Making our weekly Tuesday rounds of the covered (indoor) market (the outdoor market sold mostly fruit and veg, bric a brac, and live pets, believe it or not) with my mother, on the cheese man’s left was the egg man, or “mister Chookie” as I knew him, on account of his perennial sales pitch “come tek a look at these lover-lee chookie eggs I’ve got for yuh!”. Unlike his fellow stall-holders, whose wares fell within a particular genre, the egg man also sold milk, orange juice and yogurt due to him being one of the younger siblings of the Sheldon family that owned the local dairy, and who, excepting market days, delivered these provisions to the doorsteps of the town’s residents.

Beyond Mr. Chookie was the fish man, Mr. Scales, as my mother used to call him, although at the time her pun was lost on me. Above his stall ran the legend “fresh daily from Fleetwood, Lancs”, referring to the port just north of blackpool where much of Britain’s catch was landed. That his stall was only open Tuesdays and Thursdays didn’t seem to matter. Whether it was due to her upbringing in blackpool where there is – rightfully – a great deal of local snobbery about the quality of the fish that goes into their fish n’chips, or whether because of an innate suspicion of fishmongers, my mother always eyed mr scales’s wares closely, casting a wary eye over his glossy fish, as if trying to discern if there was anything untoward hiding among the cockle-shells. Because we rarely had fish except on Fridays when we weren’t allowed anything else – even in our lunchboxes at school we had to mark the end of the week with evil-smelling “salmon paste” sandwiches – and because mum worked a full day on Thursdays, whatever we bought on Tuesdays had to last on ice in the bottom of the fridge until then (freezing fish made it taste all woolly, she always said), so freshness was absolutely crucial otherwise it/we wouldn’t survive.

Typically, the fish was cod, but often halibut or hake did service in the flaky white fish department. This was usually broiled and served with oven-baked chips, since as a nurse my mother couldn’t countenance deep-frying at home lest it give the townies the impression she was a hypocrite in her dietary exhortations, and homemade mushy peas, flecked with mint and tangy with a splash of malt vinegar. Apart from a distinctly non-traditional and rather dodgy-looking “curry” she made every so often, friday night fish suppers were my dad’s favorite – he still demands it to this day and he is about as agnostic an Anglican as you’ll find.

Instead of waiting for Friday, and going against my mum’s rubric of no-frying, but keeping with the buying of white fish on a Tuesday, we made a version of the Provencal classic, aioli garni, with a pan seared halibut fillet, steamed fennel and butter beans. Rather like much of the cooking I experienced growing up, it doesn’t look like much on the plate – the pale colors and the two sauces lapping against one another may seem bland – but the sharp tang of the garlicky aiolli with the surprising hot peppery-bite of the brown sauce against the muted flavors of the white fish and butter beans makes for an unusually rewarding dish. I am convinced that my mum would’ve enjoyed this dish a great deal, even though she would have asked why we didn’t save it for Friday night. As for my dad, well, sadly, he wouldn’t touch it on account of it humming with garlic. Too bad for him.

Regular readers will most likely know a handful of factoids about us WANF-ers and our proclivities, among them: one of us is English, the other Italian-American; we enjoy making a wide variety of dishes, many of which we’ve sampled on our travels; and we have a young child. The more perspicacious among you will notice one or more incompatibilities in the above, especially with regard to the child and love of travel. Upon our recent visit with our English family, these came home to roost and were amplified by an exquisitely-timed bout of gastrointestinal trauma. Not that this made for a disastrous visit – far from it, in fact – but it certainly hampered our ability to sample local specialties and, after having looked forward to the prospect of an honest pub lunch for around 18 months, it made such sampling as we were able to undertake an exercise in sweet frustration.

Perhaps ironically for someone from such a small country, my knowledge of its regions is slight. I blame this on the bourgeois attitudes of my parents as much as on two back-to-back dreadful, cold, wet and windy family vacations to Wales at the age of five and six which persuaded us to forsake the British Isles henceforth for the balmier climes of continental Europe. However, I credit these early trips to Europe with my passion for good food, having been introduced to Breton buckwheat gallettes stuffed with local wild asparagus and grey shrimp in cream sauce when, through the owner of the gite and local parish priest, Monsieur Fleury, we acquired a pile of them, freshly prepared by the gnarled mitts of one of his flock, an ancient black-garbed widow named Madame LaPorte. That I was immediately and completely terrified by the sight of this one-toothed old crone lest she put me in her cauldron yet volunteered to visit her again the next evening to collect some more (my first halting words of French having been “encore des gallettes, s’il vous plait!) speaks volumes about the transformative effect of good food.

So it was that when we joined my family – sister, her husband and kids, plus my Dad and my step-mother – in an old sandstone farmhouse in the Cotswolds this past week, my expectations for what would ensue were mixed at best, chiefly featuring chaos of screaming children chasing chickens interspersed with light showers worsening to daylong downpours and limited access to anything worth eating. I am pleased to report that I was simultaneously almost completely right and completely wrong.

If there is a golden triangle for food in the UK, it’s arguably centered on the Cotswolds – a region of bucolic rolling hills made up of portions of Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, and Somerset and bordered by some of the prettiest villages in neighboring Hereford & Worcestershire. For in these yellowish dry stone-walled fields are produced world-famous cheeses (single and double Gloucester, the original Cheddar, and Oxford Blue), some fine regional ales (Donnington’s, Flowers’), scrumptious ciders and perries, some of the UK’s best heritage breed pork (Gloucester Old Spot) and, believe it or not, a significant proportion of England’s “best” wines (a term I use advisedly, but in the knowledge that some 700 years ago, during the late Medieval warm period, English wines from this region were considered superior to their French counterparts. Thanks to my father for that priceless historical gem.)

Where we stayed, in the tiny hamlet of Hampen, one would have found it almost impossible to go hungry especially at this time of the year when nature is in a riot of growth provoked by 18 hours of daylight and regular gentle showers, and still-warm organic eggs, with yolks so rich they were almost red, showed up on our doorstep every morning. It was, therefore, a major disappointment when, laid low by a virulent stomach bug acquired somehow on the plane over, I was forced to do just that to avoid regurgitating these delicious vittles. Happily, in spite of my weakened condition, the spirit of those long ago days in Brittany prevailed and consecutive lunchtime visits to two of the Cotswolds’ finest pubs were enjoyed, if approached rather warily.

The Mount Inn overlooking the picturesque village of Stanton in Gloucestershire possesses one of the finest views of any pub in England. Taking in this charming vista over a pair of Donnington’s Ales and hearty servings of old spot sausages with cheddar mash and Hereford beef and suet pudding was a lunch to soothe the soul and calm the guts of even the most jaded traveler. Similarly, the Ebrington Arms in the eponymous Worcestershire hamlet lying just outside the county’s perennially best-kept village of Chipping Campden and adjacent to the fabulous gardens at Hidcote Manor, was a sight for sore eyes after half a week living on water and dry toast. Microbrews from nearby Stow-on-the-Wold helped down a wonderfully gamey pan-fried Gloucester old spot pork chop and a Ploughman’s platter featuring local ham, farmhouse cheddar and chicken liver terrine with a selection of house-made pickles.

Of course, these were just short breaks from the general pandemonium at the farmhouse where terrified chickens scattered in a harrumph of feathers at the gleeful charge of my three year old nephew and excited screams of “poo! Poo!” filled the air almost constantly. And sure, there were a good couple of days of cold and blustery rain that kept us frustratingly confined to quarters and encouraged breeching of the wine by late morning, but this was nothing to bear compared with the loss of appetite and downright fear of eating during those hellish first several days. If Beethoven’s personal purgatory was going deaf while conceiving his most brillaint compositions, then mine is almost certainly being physically unable to enjoy eating when surrounded by a veritable bounty.

Guyana, sitting on the top right of the land mass of South America, is among the least known and most mysterious of that continent’s countries, something that is almost as true today as it was when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle used it as the setting for his 1904 novel, The Lost World. Home to the most intact and least spoiled rain forests in South America, Guyana’s biodiversity is simultaneously staggering and largely undocumented, and cascading from its mossy, permanently cloud-topped peaks, fall several of the world’s largest waterfalls. Guyana is also unique on a human-scale, having the distinction of being the only English-speaking nation in South America, and, perhaps because of this, of having been among the world’s largest producers of natural latex for the manufacture of cricket balls

The cricket-loving population is a heterogenous mix of Indian, African, European and native peoples, roughly in that order of volume. However, like much of the English-speaking Caribbean, Guyana also has a tiny, but significant, Cantonese population — a legacy of the same forces at work during the days of the British Empire that also relocated large numbers of Tamil and Gujurati Indians there to work as indentured plantation workers. Numerically insignificant, the lasting impact of these Hong Kong Chinese has been on local commerce and the cementing of certain southern Chinese dishes, the most popular of which is chow mein, in the diverse local cuisine.

Of course, the chow mein enjoyed in Guyana bears only a certain resemblance to that eaten in Canton and other parts of China, I am sure. Indeed, Chinese food all over the western world has been amended to suit local tastes and ingredients, and so it is in Guyana where access to even basic Chinese staples like soy sauce was not always possible. Similarly, the inevitable mixing between local gastronomic cultures, namely the addition of a sly pinch of West Indian curry powder that seems to find its way into all kinds of unlikely dishes across the Caribbean, is what makes this chow mein recipe inherently Guyanese, not to mention the bright yellow noodles, made with soft wheat and plenty of food coloring. Other local variations on the original include the addition of yellow squash and green beans.

We had never eaten this dish before, but we’d experienced it up-close at several West Indian parades both in New York City and London, where it was served in trays with plastic forks as street food, and where the searing perfume of garlic and curry managed to cut right through the ripe fragrance of perspiring dancers. In truth, the flavors, with the combination of curry and soy sauce, aren’t that dissimilar to the popular Singapore noodles found throughout South-East Asia and at many British Chinese restaurants, and they should feel relatively familiar to anyone who has eaten both Chinese and Indian take-out food before. So, while you (or we) may never get to visit exotic Guyana and witness first hand either it’s beautiful landscape or delicious cuisine, you should try making this dish. It only takes about twenty minutes to prepare and will satisfy a host of your ethnic food cravings.

For more authentic Caribbean recipes, check out Cynthia at Tastes Like Home.

One finds mulligatawny soup on an Indian restaurant menu the same way one always finds buffalo wings or nachos on a bar menu. It just has to be there – if it wasn’t on the menu you just know there’s something wrong with the place. But how many of you have ever ordered it over the papadums or samosas to start your meal?  Like many dishes ordered at your local Indian, it can feel like a bit heavy.   This is a good thing if you make this your lunch or your dinner, which is why I absolutely love making batches of this incredibly hearty and extremely inexpensive soup that lasts for many meals.

The funny thing is, mulligatawny soup has a kind of shady past.  After doing research, I realized that there is no cut and dry history of the soup.  There are so many variations of mulligatawny, it almost makes sense that it was difficult to pin down its origins. One thing we do know, it’s not strictly an Indian dish.  It’s actually based on an Indian dish that was changed into soup to satiate (and placate) the fussy British soldiers during the British Raj (the period between 1858 and 1947 when Britain ruled parts of South Asia/India).

Mulligatawny means “pepper water” and is believed to be loosely based on a stew the Brits loved that their Tamil servants would often serve.  They “demanded” a soup course which, before this time in history, had never been a part of Indian food culture.  The result was a thinned out version of the stew base that they liked so much.  According to research, the British eventually brought the invented soup dish back home where it became a well-loved classic there, but because of its many, many variations, it is hard to know what the original recipe contained.

Some mulligatawny soups contain rice or noodles, some are made vegetarian, but traditionally it should have a meat base (like chicken or mutton).  Some contain cream, others coconut milk or yogurt.  Some add apples for a sour/sweet flavor, others add tomato while some people just dump in some chutney.  Your head could spin with all the recipes out there!

So how did we come up with our recipe?  Well, we went to our main source – our local Indian.  We absolutely adore their mulligatawny soup and wanted to eat a version as close to theirs as possible. This homemade recipe is relatively close to one we found in a Madhur Jaffrey book, but with a bit of help from our local Indian restaurant.  It can most definitely be made vegetarian or even vegan (!) and the lentils provide a great heartiness. Pair with some naan (store-bought for us) and you’ve got an amazing lunch or dinner.  Regardless of it’s history, mulligatawny soup is going to remain a staple in my household.  It’s too easy to make and too delicious.

In the tiny Cheshire hamlet of Lower Peover (pronounced “peever”) is the delightfully rustic country pub “The Bells”, so-called because one has to literally walk around it to get to the parish church. In fact, so aligned are church and boozer that the two are separated by only fifty feet of graveyard, a low gate and a tall hedge, with the path from the church door leading directly into the pub — demonstrating the weighty tithe rural folk feel to both institutions.

I worked there as a barman in my youth, and over the course of my employment became, as barmen often do, intimate with many of the regulars, who, for the most part, were local farmers and laborers. Every day, at no later than 11.30 a.m., these ruddy-faced gents would pause outside and wash their heavily-calloused hands in the moss-rimmed trough, before propping themselves up at the bar and grunting hellos to each other. Whether their usual was a simple pint of “best”, a black n’tan, a “brown over bitter”, or a pint of “Chinese”, I’d spy them washing-up, and have it ready for them when they walked in. And, though I learned a great deal about their home-lives from their daily grousings — the damp weather affecting their strawberries, the disappointment over their older son’s desire to become a club-singer instead of a pig farmer — I never met or even saw their wives, about whom they grumbled most often. Probably because these tyrannical-sounding women were at home cooking the stout lunch their husbands’ would need if they were to remain erect at the wheel of their tractors after several noontime ales.

Europhile Pretensions Beyond My Station
In fact, the realm of the rural pub, during the daytime at least, was almost an entirely male domain. With the occasional exception of the vicar’s wife popping in mid-afternoon to admonish the regulars about their poor Sunday attendance over “half” a lager and lime, it was only in the evening that the women-folk from thereabouts came in to whet their whistles. And their whistles were whet on a peculiarly vocational basis, with the village shop-workers, almost exclusively, drinking shandies or halves of lager (with or without lime), and the professional and retired classes opting for gin and tonic, or Dubonnet and bitter lemon. The general sense — daytime or evening — seemed to be that real country people drank only beer, whereas effete, French cordials were either for “nancy boys” or the haughty, upper classes with pretensions of continental sophistication.

Being “in” with the regulars, I managed to convince myself that I, quite contrary to my middle-class upbringing, was a stalwart of the working class — even punctuating my, hitherto, mostly uncorrupted English with all kinds of full-bodied rural idioms like, “down at Jim’s mother’s” (somewhere a long way away), “coming down like cow’s piss” (heavy rain), and “‘e couldn’t stop a pig in an entry!” (describing a bow-legged person, of whom there are plenty in rural Cheshire) — and so developed an accompanying disdain for Dubonnet, without ever even having tasted it.

Made Famous by Legionnaires, Royalty
In fact, I shouldn’t have been concerned that enjoying an occasional chilled Dubonnet before dinner would impinge upon my undoubtedly macho self-image, for the drink was introduced in 1846 as the winner of a competition seeking to find effective ways of getting the famously tough soldiers of France’s Foreign Legion to take their quinine. As with several other notable aperitifs, including Kina Lillet and Fernet-Branca, Dubonnet began life as a medicinal beverage that, using fortified wine as its base, combined herbs, berries, spices and peels into a palatable mixture.

For evidence of it credentials as a nostrum, one has to look no further than the British royal family, the Windsors, whose longevity, at least on the maternal side, can be credited to regular libations of Dubonnet. It’s well-known that Her Majesty the late Queen Mother was a devotee of gin — famously having badly scalded her lower half in the bathtub after one too many — but she was also a regular on the Dubonnet, which she liked to drink in a 30/70 ratio with gin and a slice of lemon under the ice. So committed to this was Her Majesty, that she once noted before leaving the UK on a trip abroad, “…I think that I will take two small bottles of Dubonnet and gin with me this morning, in case it is needed…” Similarly, her daughter, the reigning Queen, Elizabeth II, is rumored to take a daily Dubonnet and gin before lunch. Royalty, you see, doesn’t have to work in the afternoons.

The Multi-Colored Belle of the Bar
As we have seen, preparations for Dubonnet abound, including with bitter lemon and with gin, but there are a myriad others, and Dubonnet features in literally hundreds of cocktails the world over. Perhaps this is because it, like Lillet, comes in more than one color — three, in fact — though, in the United States, only two are generally available — white and red, with the latter being by far the most common and widely used. The gold variety can occasionally be found behind cocktail bars of quality.

Now, because it’s red, Dubonnet Rouge adds a certain drama to any cocktail, and can therefore be used in place of Cointreau and cranberry juice in a Cosmopolitan, instead of the sweet Vermouth in a Manhattan, or in place of Campari in an Americano. However, that shouldn’t suggest it is nothing more than a colorant. Dubonnet Rouge can quite easily be the prinicipal in many cocktails, including the fabulously-named Smoking Cat, amongst others. The similarly aromatic Blanc is often used as a substitute for dry Vermouth, in famous cocktails like the Martini, Rob Roy, and the superbly-titled Creole Scream.

Marxist vs. Gastronomic Class-Struggle
If the regulars at the Bells were right, and you are what you drink, then I am, in all honesty, an arriviste, petit-bourgeois Englishman from the provinces with pretensions of epicurean sophistication. I am, I realize, far more closely aligned with the mixed-drink sippers than the hearty beer-drinking peasants of my former place of work. I hereby confess that I enjoy nothing more than an aperitif of Dubonnet rouge over ice and garnished with a slice of orange, as I contemplate the arrival of a savory bistrot luncheon. Similarly, my predilections are more inclined towards a glass of Dubonnet blanc with ice and a slice of lemon ahead of a sole meuniere than two or three pints of best bitter and a plate of Irish stew. Does the fact that my tastebuds contradict my ancestry and upbringing make me a traitor to my class and a bad person? Okay, don’t answer that. Instead, you should give either color of Dubonnet a try in whichever preparation you find most suitable to your sense of self and class identity.

Similarly, in the American imagination, the British are all highly genteel, pale-skinned folk, who sip tea out of dainty bone china cups at exactly four p.m. every day, and take tiny bites out of their cucumber sandwiches to avoid baring their horrific teeth. Of course, most Brits are more likely to be swigging gin or alcopops from a tin mug than Earl Grey by the time four o’clock comes around, but as with French and Mexican stereotypes, these outdated notions retain an element of truth.

In this case, the Victorian era high-tea of, well, tea and various sandwiches and cakes isn’t a tradition that has survived intact. However, the summertime practice of taking ones tea (meaning the meal here) out of doors in a kind of impromptu and slightly lame picnic is still going strong, particularly since the tea (meaning the drink here) is commonly replaced by another Victorian era stalwart, Pimm’s.

As I wrote last year, prior to the industrial revolution, London’s East End and Docklands area was known for the quality of its shellfish. The large tidal range on that part of the Thames revealed great and healthy mudflats at low tide from which bushels of cockles, mussels, winkles, razor clams, and oysters were pulled. This bounty of shellfish meant that oyster bars were as much a part of East End life as rhyming slang, and it was typical for your working man to wash down each mouthful of crustacean with a jigger of dry gin. Now, if you’ve ever drunk cheap London dry gin neat, you’ll know that the bitter flavor can turn even the toughest Cockney’s mouth inside-out and have him clutching the Betty Grable for support.

A Little of the Back Story
So it was that in 1823, East End oyster bar owner James Pimm began serving a drink that mixed gin with quinine, citrus fruit, and spices to make it more palatable. Pimm’s cocktail, or No.1 Cup, as it became known after the small tankard it was served in, quickly became a hit, and before long even the posh folks of London’s West End were quaffing it as “The Original Gin Sling”. So popular was his beverage, that James Pimm introduced two other kinds of Pimm’s cups to London drinkers: numbers 2 and 3, based on scotch and brandy, respectively.

Indeed, by the late 1880s, Pimm’s had established itself such a following that even when the Pimm family sold their business – to no less than Sir Horatio Davies, member of Parliament and (at the time) Lord Mayor of London – the purchaser decided to keep the name. Davies expanded the Pimm’s brand to five new oyster bars around the city and succeeded in making his drinks such an integral part of Victorian life that throughout the empire from Delhi to Khartoum, Pimm’s was refreshing the British troops, tommies and officers alike. And, until the outbreak of the second World War, Pimm’s was the drink of choice for any self-respecting Britisher. This enduring popularity bringing forth a 4th “cup”, this time based on rum.

Pimm’s Gets Groovy
During the 1960s, when Britain, and particularly London – with the arrival of the Stones, Kinks, Beatles, and The Who – became cool again, sales of Pimm’s, which had dipped in the post-war years, took off. Daring to reinvent itself as the drink of the trendy, swinging classes instead of the stuffy, buttoned-up Victorians, the company launched two new cups, numbers five and six, based on rye and vodka, to great acclaim.

Ever the fashion-conscious beverage purveyor, Pimm’s capitalized on the latest era of Brit-pop cool – the mid-1990s – when Blur and Oasis were kings of indie rock, to release its ready-mixed cans of Pimm’s & Lemonade, and in certain places, Pimm’s on tap. Sadly, throughout it’s long, chameloenic history, Pimm’s has been out of fashion as often as it’s been groovy. Between 1970 and 1990, many of Pimm’s cups were phased out, with only numbers 1 and 6 currently still in regular production. The no.3 cup, based on brandy, is still sold but only seasonally nowadays as Pimm’s Winter Cup.

Personal History
In my lifetime, Pimm’s has mostly been associated with watching a cricket match, or watching things float by from a beer garden by the Thames, while scorching my pinkish skin scarlet under sunny skies. However, you don’t have to be British, in Britain, or even interested in British mod-style music to enjoy Pimm’s. Wherever the sun is shining and it’s approaching Pimm’s o’clock, there’s an opportunity to slice-up some fruit (strawberries, apples, and oranges are good), cucumber (not just for sandwiches), and mint leaves, mix yourself a large jug of Pimm’s and lemonade (lemon/lime soda is fine), and watch the sun fall into the sea.

And, lest you wonder why we’re promoting a British drink on America’s no.1 (pun intended) holiday, I should remind you that every year on or around Independence Day I am asked, by more Americans than seems possible, how we celebrate 4th July in England.

It is illustrative, though, of this prevailing American viewpoint that I can vividly remember – upon my return to England after a couple of year-sojourn in America in my early teens – being pilloried by my class-mates for wearing a retainer. And, desperate to fit back into England and be more English than those who’d never left, I immediately removed the offending wires and relegated them to overnight retainerdom forever. Said rebellious fang is the likely result of this.

The fact that I had not been to the dentist in five years until last week, is also illustrative of my fear of the dentist, of which the likely source is some Victorian-style tooth-extractions I underwent in the UK, involving giant needles, poorly administered Novocaine, a pair of potentially tetanus-laced pliers, a dental assistant restraining me by the forehead, and spots of blood all over my neatly-ironed white school shirt.

Our teeth are one of the least remarkable, yet most important elements, in the process that takes up most our spare waking moments – food, and the enjoyment thereof. A fact that was brought home to both Amy and I when we received stern warnings about how long it had been since our last visits to the dentist. It might be slightly comical for the dentist to ask you a series of questions about your dental hygiene routine requiring more than grunts for answers when his hands are immersed up to the wrist in your head, but his admonition that we were close to having serious gum-disease removed all the humor from the situation. It was a reminder that while we are scrupulous in our scrubbing of pots and pans, sharpening of knives, and oiling of chopping boards, we had been neglecting one of our key culinary tools that, unchecked, would have seriously affected our ability to enjoy our favorite thing.

The moral of the story, therefore, is if you haven’t been to see him/her in a while, we personally recommend you make an appointment with your dentist so sooner rather than later. The longer you leave it, the more unpleasant it’s likely to be when you do finally have to open wide and bear your not-so-pearly whites. And, if a greater incentive is needed, check out the slideshow above.

Only for those of you who’ve been to the dentist recently, here’s a quick and easy recipe for an espresso pannacotta which will both attack and stain your enamel with sugar and coffee…

Espresso Pannacotta (makes 8 small or 4 large)

Ingredients:
2 cups (500ml) double (heavy) cream
8 tbsp cold espresso coffee
4 tbsps superfine (caster) sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/2 tsp powdered gelatin

Recipe
Add cream and sugar to a saucepan and stir over gentle heat until sugar is completely dissolved.
Bring mixture to a boil, and simmer for about 3 minutes, adding your vanilla extract and espresso. Stir well.
Sprinkle in powdered gelatin and stir until completely dissolved.
Remove from heat and pour mixture into espresso cups or dariole molds and cover each tightly with plastic wrap, making sure to press wrap onto surface of cream.
Refrigerate until set – at least 3 hours, preferably overnight.
To un-mold pannacotte, pour some hot water into a bowl. Dip coffee cups/molds into hot water and turn a couple of times. Then, run a knife around inside of cup to release pannacotta. Invert onto a plate, shake a bit and pray it all comes out in one piece.
Serve with fresh berries or, as we did, kumquats.

File this one under “utter fabrications told to you by older sibling and believed for too long”. I must have been very young when my sister (15 months my senior) informed me that I should be wary of eating my grandmother’s suet dumplings because suet was the gooey material supporting bovine eye-balls. Quite where she got this idea from, I’m not sure, but she seemed to believe it and, as a credulous juvenile, so did I. And so convinced was I, that until some brief research yesterday proved her to have been telling porkies, I had held it up as truth for the intervening 25 years or so. Why I found her a credible source about this I have no idea – she’s been a vegetarian since the age of 12, and an extremely picky eater before that.

Suet is, in fact, raw beef fat that is typically from around the animals’ kidney or loin area, and while that may not be a much less appetizing prospect than eye-socket, it certainly helps explain why it should be used in the preparation of a traditional British dumpling. It’s basically a firm kind of lard that melts perfectly at the relatively low temperatures found on top of a stew, which is where a British dumpling is typically found.

American readers will be forgiven for commonly associating dumplings only with Chinese restaurants, or at the outside, with Russian or Polish cuisine, but in the northern reaches of Britain, suet dumplings are, or, at least, were a frequent sight floating on top of a thick stew during the winter. And indeed, suet dumplings do look and taste a bit like their Chinese counterparts – slightly chewy and definitely filling, except that they’re much less uniform in shape and are not wrapped in pasta, the filling is the dumpling, basically. Suet as an ingredient though, is not confined to the creation of floaters, it’s also used in the recipe for other traditional British favorites as spotted dick, pastry, Christmas pudding and mincemeat, demonstrating remarkable flexibility as a fat and flavoring.

Suet is also commonly used throughout the Caribbean in the preparation of patties, particularly in Jamaica, and I think that this is the reason for it appearing on the shelves of our local supermarket, as not far from us resides a large and vibrant Caribbean community.

We’ll definitely be exploring some patty recipes with suet in the near future (a $2 package goes a long way), but for the time being, please consider searching out some suet and making yourself a good old British dinner this weekend. It’s on oft-repeated maxim among survival experts that icy temperatures can best be braved when you’re core is fired with plenty of firm beef fat. I’m not kidding.

Chicken & Root Vegetable Stew with Herbed Suet Dumplings (serves 4-6)

Ingredients

• 4 bone-in chicken breasts, or (preferably) 6-8 bone-in chicken thighs
• 1 large yellow onion, roughly sliced
• 1 large leek, cut into 1 inch chunks
• 3 large carrots, cut into 1 inch chunks
• 2 parsnips, cut into 1 inch chunks
• 4 medium potatoes, cut into eighths, or 2 inch chunks
• 4 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
• 1 bouquet garni (store bought, or wrap parsley, bay and thyme in the green part of a leek and secure with string)
• pinch of hot pepper flakes
• 2oz (50 grams) dry white wine
• 3 tsp olive oil
• 2-3 pints (1-1. liters) chicken stock (depending on size of pot you’re using)
• 2oz (50 grams) plain flour
• salt and black pepper

For the dumplings:

• 4.5oz (125 grams) plus a bit more, plain flour
• 2oz (50 grams) grated or very finely diced fresh suet
• 2-3oz (50-75 grams) water
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 1 tbsp chopped parsley

Recipe

• Heat oil in large heavy casserole or dutch oven to medium.
• Dust chicken pieces with flour and sprinkle with salt and pepper and place in pot. Allow to brown well on all sides – about ten minutes.
• Remove chicken and add onions, carrots, potatoes, parsnips and leeks. Sweat until lightly browned, about 6 minutes.
• Add garlic and hot pepper, and cook for a further 2 minutes, or until garlic softens and perfumes room.
• Deglaze pot with white wine or 2oz of the stock. Make sure all the caramelized chicken juices come up before adding remaining stock (or enough to cover contents) and bouquet garni.
• Cover and allow to simmer for around 40 minutes.
• In a bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt, chopped suet and parsley. Mix well.
• Add half of your water and stir. If dumpling mixture is too dry add more, but you’re looking for a dough that’s nicely sticky and elastic, not too damp.
• Then using two tablespoons, make quennelles with dough and removing the pot lid, gently plop them into simmering stew. Alternatively, flour your hands well and make squash-ball size dumplings and drop them in.
• Then, re-cover stew and allow to simmer for another 10-15 minutes.
• Serve in a bowl and allow to stick to your ribs. Repeat with second helpings.