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Summary
Summary
Britain's foremost food writer Nigel Slater returns to the garden in this sequel to Tender , his acclaimed and beloved volume on vegetables. With a focus on fruit, Ripe is equal parts cookbook, primer on produce and gardening, and affectionate ode to the inspiration behind the book--Slater's forty-foot backyard garden in London.
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Intimate, delicate prose is interwoven with recipes in this lavishly photographed cookbook. Slater offers more than 300 delectable dishes--both sweet and savory--such as Apricot and Pistachio Crumble , Baked Rhubarb with Blueberries , and Crisp Pork Belly with Sweet Peach Salsa . With a personal, almost confessional approach to his appetites and gustatory experiences, Slater has crafted a masterful book that will gently guide you from the garden to the kitchen, and back again.
Author Notes
Nigel Slater lives in London.
Reviews (2)
New York Review of Books Review
THE funny thing about cooking in summer is that you don't really want to - nor do you really have to, unless you consider slicing tomatoes and flipping burgers a chore. And yet, as long as our friends keep migrating into our backyards, the summer cookbooks keep coming. If you're in the 1 percent of professional chefs (or the competitive home cooks who plunked down $625 for Nathan Myhrvold's "Modernist Cuisine" last year), you're most excited about the arrival of MUGARITZ: A Natural Science of Cooking (Phaldon, $49.95), by Andoni Lius Aduriz. This stone-cold-gorgeous art book happens to have some recipes, and they're impossible for the 99 percent. But wow. At Aduriz's restaurant, Mugaritz, the former El Bulli cook has distilled what John Lanchester, in his introduction, calls the "thisness and hereness" of Aduriz's rural Basque surroundings into subtle yet technically rigorous food. If you can source the ingredients for mouse melon soup with tomato water and leafy goosefoot, go nuts. Or you can make every single dish in another cookbook that has excited pro and amateur chefs alike. A GIRL AND HER PIG (Ecco/HarperCollins, $29.99) is that rare restaurant offering whose recipes actually make you feel like a better cook. Hats off to April Bloomfield and her co-author, JJ Goode, for making them really work in the home kitchen. The plucky British chef made a name for herself in New York at the Spotted Pig, the Breslin and the John Dory by cooking powerfully flavorful food that combines nose-to-tail fearlessness with the "good ingredients make great food" teachings of London's River Café. (Bloomfield landed there early in her career, having botched her dream of becoming a policewoman.) These recipes feel more like what Bloomfield makes on her day off, rather than a collection of her greatest hits. (Yes, her gnudi are here, though she admits that "it's been seven years of sheer hell making these little things." After spending the three-plus days required, you'll commiserate.) Bloomfield's style is about robust flavors and a sneakily sensual combination of textures, whether it's a salad of pig's ears fried in duck fat with a bracing lemoncaper dressing or one of carrots roasted in spice paste and tossed with creamy avocados and tart oranges. A time-consuming lamb curry, simmered for hours in pineapple juice, made me so proud I'm now game to tackle her cassoulet. This woman has accomplished a lot in her 38 years. Over in France and through the looking glass, Alain Passard, the chef at L'Arpège, has seen it all. Because he avoids haute technology and has a romantic attachment to the vegetables he grows on his own farms, he fell out of fashion during the modern gastronomy movement. But now young chefs everywhere are realizing that he's the godfather of the future. Every morning, Passard's heirloom legumes board the TGV to Paris, where his Michelin-starred restaurant makes them the focus of his wildly expensive tasting menus. Passard's ART OF COOKING WITH VEGETABLES (Frances Lincoln / Publishers Group West, $29.95), which has just been translated into English, is a strange, magical book. The flavor combinations are avant-garde: asparagus with pear and red sorrel; peaches with lemon and saffron; peas and pink grapefruit with white almonds; red beetroot with lavender and crushed blackberries. Instructions are simple and brief, as if he's speaking to one of his cooks. As for what the finished dish should look like, you'll have to use your imagination, since the recipes are illustrated solely by Passard's own Colorform-ish collages. Like his food, they play with texture, color, shape and abstract representation; by necessity, they're deliciously open to interpretation and improvisation. You probably can't get "new pink-tinged garlic, preferably from Lautrec" or "Noir de Crimée" tomatoes, but you can get their generic equivalents, so move ahead. If you're open to it, cooking from this book will change you. Quietly and surely. On the bourgeois end of the French spectrum is LA TARTINE GOURMANDE: Recipes for an Inspired Life (Roost Books, $35). Béatrice Peltre, a self-taught French-born cook and amateur photographer, began blogging about the meals she made when she moved to the United States. Her food and photographs are appealing : fresh and lovely, with a distinct French accent. There's a chapter on "Casual Lunches With Friends" that includes the recipe for a clafoutis of caramelized cherry tomatoes, zucchini and goat cheese; another, on "Sophisticated and Elegant Dinners" has a saffron-flavored crab-and-watercress soufflé. And there are plenty of tarts, tartlets, tartines, quiches and things layered in glasses, a pet of French women's magazines like Elle à Table. The whole package has a pretty, casually aspirational elegance - like eating an Anthropologie store. The baking section is perhaps the most interesting, thanks to its reliance on alternative flours. After investing in quinoa, rice, buckwheat and hazelnut flours, I made banana, chocolate and hazelnut muffins; brown-butter pistachio and poppy-seed financiers; and pretty Pink Lady apple tartlets. Delicious surprises all. Many of this summer's books are single-subject: fish, fruit, pizza, ice pops. There's even a bacon e-book from the butchers at the Meat Hook in Brooklyn. Mona Talbott's ZUPPE: Soups From the Kitchen of the American Academy In Rome (The Little Bookroom, $18.95) is smaller than a salad plate, but filled with 50 delicious, simple recipes. When Talbott was asked by her former boss, Alice Waters, to cook for the artists and scholars at the academy on a micro budget, the chef was probably too entranced by the thought of Rome to think that bit through. And so she learned to fill up a crowd with graceful thrift, starting with pots of soup. The recipes are classic Italian, but with her own flair: purée half of the carrots in a lentil and carrot soup for body and color; infuse olive oil with chili flakes and drizzle over a hearty potato and chickpea soup; blitz some unexpected parsley along with the usual mint, and stir into a pea purée. The deliciousness-to-cheapness ratio of Talbott's recipes will give you a thrill. Speaking of single-subject resourcefulness, Jim Lahey changed the way America baked bread with his no-knead dough recipe. (Or, rather, he got us baking bread in the first place.) Now the owner of Co. pizzeria and the Sullivan Street Bakery follows up with MY PIZZA: The Easy No-Knead Way to Make Spectacular Pizza at Home (Clarkson Potter, $27.50), written with Rick Flaste. It's not going to set the home-cooking world on fire in quite the same way, but it will inspire pizza nights from coast to coast. The instructions for the master dough and shaping take only a few pages. I wish Lahey had included more on incorporating flours other than all-purpose - 00 flour is a crust's crispiest friend - and had taken the time to really explain how to shape the comically elastic dough. (You'll get it after the 20th try.) But his toppings are so creative and delicious you won't care if your pizzas are shaped like Texas. Sure there are recipes for pies with basic tomato sauce and pepperoni (actually homemade merguez), but there's also a rich flambé pizza with béchamel, foolproof lardons and caramelized onions; another with brussels sprouts and chestnuts sprinkled with celery salt; even a corn and tomato pie, should you care to crank your oven to 500 degrees before October. How the British writer/farmer/TV personality/sustainable food advocate Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall had the time to research a thorough, thoughtful, 608-page guide to finding and eating "good" fish is a head-scratcher. For THE RIVER COTTAGE FISH BOOK: The Definitive Guide to Sourcing and Cooking Sustainable Fish and Shellfish (Ten Speed Press, $45), at least he had a partner: the journalist and "leading fish authority" Nick Fisher. It's a glum time to be a fish lover (you may as well enjoy it while you can). But, the authors say, you can still buy responsibly and cook well. After walking readers through the dire state of the seas and telling them how to shop intelligently, they detail the skills of fishery, from killing, bleeding and gutting to filleting and storing. And then you're into the "cookery": lots of very pleasant, not terribly complicated ways to prepare varieties of fish that may not yet be your favorites. Cod, salmon and tuna don't get much airtime here, but sardines, mackerel and pollock become deeply likable when you roast them on potatoes and bay leaves, simmer them for hours in a Japanese-inspired sauce, add them to an easy soup with chorizo and potatoes or - less sustainably for the eater - cream them into half a pound of butter and "pot" them. Even conger eel becomes tempting in their hands. A large chunk of the book is given to "profiles" of their favorite fish, which they hope will prove to be biographies rather than obituaries. What's with those hyperproductive yet humble British? Just a year ago, American readers were presented with "Tender," Nigel Slater's personal recipedia of all the vegetables he'd planted in his London backyard. Luckily there was room for bushes and trees, because it allowed Slater to compose RIPE: A Cook in the Orchard (Ten Speed Press, $40). Like "Tender," "Ripe" is an alphabetical guide in which the recipes for each fruit are preceded by gardening advice, as well as lists of tasty kitchen combinations - apricots play nicely with pistachios, lamb, brandy and so on. The book also features the Slater trademark of coolly poetic color photographs printed on the same matte paper as the recipes, a style that has given rise to many American imitations. The recipes reflect his modest ambitions to be well and comfortably fed, to embrace butter and cream, to make tarts that are "warm, crumbly, messy and sweet," and to chat readers through it all. Even the recipes have soothing, writerly names like "Creamy Cheesecake, Sharp Sauce" and "A Deeply Appley Apple Crumble." (Leave it to Slater to muse on "the undercrust," his word for "that damp, almost magical place where crumble meets fruit.") There are savory bits too: pork, wouldn't you know, is delicious with everything. One of the most attitudinal cookbooks to come out in the States since, well, forever is THE HUMPHRY SLOCOMBE ICE CREAM BOOK (Chronicle Books, paper, $19.95), by Jake Godby, Sean Vahey and Paolo Lucchesi. Their San Francisco ice cream shop isn't for kids. Not with flavors like Secret Breakfast (bourbon and cornflake cookies), Here's Your Damn Chocolate Ice Cream and Jesus Juice (a sorbet of cola, red wine and vinegar). No, these are scoops that get people like Ira Glass and Ferran Adrià to blurb your book. Adrià isn't wrong in writing that Humphry Slocombe is his "little child, in a way." Though the recipes are based on a straightforward, marvelously creamy custard, the flavors tend toward the Adrià-tic. After years of getting my ice cream recipes from the brilliant Claudia Fleming, it was fun to try oddball combos like Chocolate Smoked Salt and Harvey Milk and Honey (if you don't know who he was, "please dose this book and kindly return it," the authors request). Even an almost staid flavor like Pepper and Mint Chip taught me new tricks: stir melted chocolate into the just-finished frozen base; it will harden into lacy shards. While others churn vanilla and strawberry this summer, I'm working toward Elvis (the Fat Years). Vegan? In your fat years? Cool off with PEOPLE'S POPS: 55 Recipes for Ice Pops, Shave Ice, and Boozy Pops From Brooklyn's Coolest Pop Shop (Ten Speed Press, $16.99). A few summers ago, Nathalie Jordi, David Carrell and Joel Horowitz paused their media careers to make hipster popsides (local, seasonal, adorable), selling them at the inspiring new food markets popping up in Brooklyn and Manhattan. You can try them at home: blackberry-rose, apricot-lavender, fig jam and yogurt, peach and bourbon. All you need is an ice-pop mold and sticks, a food processor and some simple syrup, and your summer will thank you. Of the season's grilling books, Adam Perry Lang's CHARRED & SCRUFFED: Bold New Techniques for Explosive Flavor On and Off the Grill (Artisan, paper, $24.95), written with Peter Kaminsky, is the most interesting - and the most challenging. If you know a person ready to get his - or, hello, her - Ph.D. in grilling, this will blow his (or her) already expanded mind. The rest of us will think it's trying too hard to come up with new things to do to a perfectly nice piece of meat. My husband tackled the clinched-and-planked chicken legs, though I made the basic brine, the "four seasons" spice blend, the two-part baste required to get those legs on the soaked cedar planks, plus the board dressing for when they came off. As for the finishing salt, he'd given up by then, since the planks had caught fire. We did enjoy the insanity that was scruffed carbonara potatoes, though it was disorienting when this dude-friendly writer suddenly had me clarifying butter and making a sabayon. For pure reading pleasure, try Margaret Yardley Potter, otherwise known as the memoirist Elizabeth Gilbert's great-grandmother. A rich Philadelphian who married the wrong man and fell into a life of scrappiness, Potter was a broad of the first order. Adventurous and funny, she could have drunk and smoked Elizabeth David, M. F. K. Fisher and probably even Dorothy Parker under the table. Her cookbook, AT HOME ON THE RANGE (McSweeney's, $24), was published in 1947 and then disappeared. Recipe instructions read something like this one for bread dough: "Is your cigarette finished? Let's go. This is fun. . . . Pretend it's your worst enemy and give it a great punch right in its solar plexus to deflate its ego. Give it a few more good lefts and rights and . . . cut it into quarters. There, madam, are four loaves of bread." Among the practical chapters for "Weekend Guests Without a Weakened Hostess" and "Salad Days and Ways for Dressing Them" is "You Don't Eat That?," a celebration of all the foods she wishes people would try: calf's brains with black butter; fried tripe; cockscombs with wine; and a strange "Italian tomato pie or pizza" she discovered in a little grocery in Philadelphia. She urges readers to "continue your culinary explorations by searching out-of-the-way delicatessens and hole-inthe-wall groceries for more of that something different." It makes sense that this was published by Dave Eggers's imprint, because Potter is a heroine for a new generation of cooks for whom her words wilt be a motto: "Go your culinary ways with confidence and without apology." ONLINE Still hungry? Consult the capsule descriptions of 20 more cookbooks at nytimes.com/books. Christine Muhlke is the executive editor of Bon Appétit.
Library Journal Review
In this lush sequel to Tender, an acclaimed collection of seasonal vegetable recipes, British author and broadcaster Slater focuses on sweet and savory applications for fruits grown in his London garden. Organized alphabetically, the fruit-focused chapters offer historical and varietal information, gardening tips, and suggested flavor pairings, followed by simple recipes like Baked Peaches with Maple Syrup and Vanilla, Slow-Cooked Quinces with Cassis, and Roast Leg of Pork with Spiced Rhubarb. VERDICT A comprehensive fruit book that's sure to please the farm-to-table minded. The challenge here lies not in employing fancy equipment or techniques, but in tracking down ingredients like elderflowers, gooseberries, and guinea fowl. (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
An apple in the kitchen Once we take an apple into the kitchen--for a pie, perhaps--its flavor becomes only slightly less important than that of an apple eaten straight from the tree. You might lose the very top notes, the subtlest hint of raspberry, say, or nutmeg, but the backbone of sharpness or intense sweetness will remain. It may even sing louder than in the raw fruit. It is worth considering which might be the best apple for the job. A slice of pork crackling needs a sharp bite to offset its rich fattiness; a dish of poached apples will possess an extraordinary elegance when made with a batch of early Discovery; a baked apple needs plenty of acidity to balance the brown sugar and vine fruits with which it is traditionally stuffed. But what is most important to the cook is whether an apple is the sort to keep its shape or not. Will the fruit stay in one piece or will it expand in a balloon of snowy bubbles? Talk of "cooking" apples and "eating" apples is confusing and full of anomalies. Many varieties cross over between dessert and cooking. A crisp Howgate Wonder, for instance, is as happy with cheese as it is under the crust of pie. You can cook with any apple, but whether it is a wise choice is another matter. I tend to think of Malus domestica as dividing into two kinds--those that will look good in soldierly slices under the glaze of a fruit tart, and those that will melt into a sweet, fragrant slush. Varieties We have grown well over 2,000 varieties of apple in this country. I would dearly like to list the characteristics of each deserving one but that would constitute a hefty book in its own right (I occasionally have to remind myself that whatever else it may be, Ripe is principally a cookbook). For a full discussion of apple varieties, you cannot do better than Joan Morgan and Alison Richard's Book of Apples (Ebury Press, 1993). It barely leaves my side in autumn, and it is here that I check the history and tasting notes of, say, Hoary Morning or Mrs. Wilmott. It is a directory, but this is also where you will find out that D'Arcy Spice is traditionally picked on Guy Fawkes Day and that the Norfolk Beefing was dried in bread ovens and used by bakers. An extraordinarily detailed and important work. The Internet, too, has rich pickings. Where else would you learn that you have been looking in the wrong place for the Manaccan Primrose (it is found almost exclusively around the Lizard in Cornwall) or that, despite its delicious name, Buttery d'Or (or Buttery Door or Buttery Dough) is best as a cider apple? I have instead split the most popular apple varieties (and those we are most likely to come across during the Apple Day celebrations around October 23 each year) into what I feel are the most useful categories for the cook--apples that hold their shape, those that froth, and those that have a unique aYnity for eating as they are, or with cheese. The frothing apples A baked apple, its skin split, the top half rising like a beret, is best achieved with an acidic variety. The list includes Golden Noble*, Kentish Fillbasket, Emneth Early, Monarch, Charlotte, Newton Wonder, Lord Derby, and the Carlisle and Keswick Codlins. Most of these I have met at some point in my cooking life; others, such as Edward VII and the Eynsham Dumpling, I have never even seen on sale, let alone poured custard over. Then, of course, there are the seedlings: Bramley, Dumelow's, and Pott's. If you are in Cornwall with nothing much to do on an October afternoon, you might like to go in search of the Colloggett Pippin. You will be in with a good chance if you pronounce it Clogget and are within sight of the Tamar. The Cornish have a habit of shortening place names the way children shorten those of their best friends. An apple that will bake nicely without collapsing is the Grenadier, but it carries a hefty dose of sweetness too. My own reverence is kept for Peasgood's Nonsuch, a generous, beaming apple with the geniality of a pumpkin. Handsome, striped, and slightly russetted, it combines cloudlike froth and deep flavor. The tart, complex Roxbury Russet,* a favorite of Thomas Jefferson, takes well to the oven too, as do the sweet-yet-tangy Honeycrisp, the spicy, juicy Esopus Spitzenburg,* and the tart Northern Spy.* Keeping their shape--apples for an open tart or a good, stiff purée The variety of apple we use is, of course, a matter of taste, but occasionally the choice can be crucial. Attempt to make a tart in the French manner, with fine pastry and overlapping slices of fruit, using a frothing apple such as Bramley and you will fail. A fruit that keeps its shape when cooked is essential if the characteristic neatness of classic French pâtisserie is to be preserved. French pastry chefs don't really do wobbly. That means a Charles Ross, James Grieve, Gravenstein,* or, if you find one, a Cravert. A Granny Smith* will behave well too, and its lack of sweetness will balance the fruit jelly you will inevitably use as a glaze. The drier the flesh of an apple, the more likely it is to retain a semblance of its shape. Annie Elizabeth, still popular in the Midlands, is just about perfect for this, but I wish you good luck in tracking her down. Golden Pippin will work, though my own pick is Blenheim Orange,* with its lightly flattened top and flushed skin the timid orange of an October sunset. Firm, creamy-yellow-fleshed fruits are also worth a thought as stewing apples, becoming tender and almost canary yellow when simmered with a little sugar, while not exploding into a mass of foam. An apple for cheese Away from the stove, there are apples to be chosen to eat with cheese, which can be a lifelong and pleasure-filled hunt. The marriage of fruit and cheese is a very personal one, and only you can say whether Adam's Pearmain is the one for a wedge of Cheddar, or the Beeley Pippin works better with a six-month-matured Caerphilly than it does with a newly made goat cheese. As with pairing food and wine, there is no right and wrong. A lump of cheese and an apple is a regular lunch in our house; more often than not with a bowl of soup--a mildly spiced parsnip soup, a jagged lump of Cheddar, and a Cox's* being a favorite January lunch. I tend to prefer the aromatic apples with cheese--those whose notes may include a subtle breath of hazelnuts, aniseed, pear drops, or a faintly herbal inflection. Aromatic apples are not the easiest of fruits to find, being mostly older, less sweet varieties. With the exception of Ashmead's Kernel,* which I have occasionally spotted in supermarkets, these are farm-stand varieties, or ones to jostle for, elbow to elbow, at the farmers' markets. Cornish Gilliflower,* Alfred Jolibois, Ribston and Beeley Pippins, Carlswell's and Ellison's Orange, D'Arcy Spice,* Orleans Reinette,* Easter Orange (though I have yet to taste it), Jupiter, and Suntan are what I call cheese apples. *Available from US sources. Apples and ... Fennel Both the bulb and the seeds will introduce a welcome breath of aniseed to an apple salad. Cinnamon The knee-jerk spice for apples it may be, but with good reason. Any dessert application will benefit from a generous pinch of the ground spice, particularly where brown sugar is involved. Nutmeg Just the most diminutive grating will lend a homey warmth to a sweet recipe. Dark sugars The butterscotch notes of light muscovado and the treacly tones of dark muscovado marry well with the sharper varieties of apple. Berries The sharper fruits such as black currants, elderberries, and loganberries are better partners for the apple than sweet strawberries or raspberries. Blackberries Apple and blackberry is probably the ultimate pairing of fruits. A partnership that feels like part of our national identity. Honey Use to brush an apple tart after baking or instead of sugar when sweetening stewed apples. Maple syrup Pour over baked apples or blend into a purée. Use to glaze wafer-thin apple tarts straight from the oven. Brandy I am not one for including much alcohol in recipes, but brandy with the fruit of the apple tree is an exception. A very successful match. Cheese I have gone into detail about this masterful match elsewhere, but a highlight of any Saturday shopping trip in autumn is when we buy a bag of apples from the farmers' market, then try them out with different cheeses. This is the way I discovered the delights of munching Discovery and goat cheese and Egremont Russet with a piece of Double or (very rare) Single Gloucester. It's a good family-around-the table game. Nuts The nut family is never happier than when in the presence of apples, especially in cakes. Hazelnuts, almonds, and walnuts are more successful than Brazils or pistachios. Butter The preferred cooking medium with this ingredient, though if oil is a necessity, then use peanut, hazelnut, or walnut rather than olive or sunflower. Dried fruits Slices of yellow Russet and a lump of British cheese on a piece of raisin-freckled fruit bread is a great midmorning pick-me-up and much better for us than tiramisu. Pork Any sharp apple will cut the fatty notes of pork, but the silkiest sauces tend to come from the large fruit such as Grenadier, Peasgood's, and the like. Sage A diYcult herb to marry with fruit, but apples and sage get on well. A couple of leaves tucked into the filling of a pie with a cheese crust is worth a try. The fatty qualities of roast pork are best balanced with a dab of sauce made from the Bramley-style fruits, but other meats will benefit too: duck, goose, and pork sausages take on a lighter feel in the mouth with a smear of apple purée. Apple and game is well worth trying, especially pheasant and mallard. Apples flatter the dark character of venison too, particularly if you stir a spoonful of red currant or rowan (small, tart fruit) jelly into the gravy. Mackerel, grilled till its skin crisps, is just as happy with applesauce as it is with gooseberry. Most varieties can be used as a flavoring in a sausage hotpot, but only as a gem to find hidden in the rich gravy, not as a main ingredient, where their effect would be too sweet. Try a couple of "cookers" in a pork casserole, cut into thick slices and added half way through cooking. The wedlock of apples and ham works in many ways. An apple jelly makes a fine accompaniment for cold honey-baked ham; thinly sliced Russets are refreshing in a ham sandwich made with granary-style bread; a piercing purée of Bramley-type fruit will enliven a plate of warm poached ham; ham steaks become infinitely more interesting with the addition of a spot of applesauce. Some varieties store more comfortably than others. Nothing quite beats the traditional slatted wooden storage racks, but then, few of us have the room nowadays. Wrapping them in newspaper seems to succeed, as does nicking a few polystyrene apple trays from your produce market (it works well enough for their crummy old imports). The crucial point is to prevent the fruits touching one another. Apart from the risk of bruising, if the skins are nestling too close to one another, a single bad apple will spread like wildfire through the whole box. Any type will keep better under refrigeration. I have kept even the most temperamental apples in a plastic bag in the bottom of the fridge for weeks. To avoid loss of flavor, bring the fruit to room temperature before eating. When deciding which apple to use for which job, check its sugar content. The sweeter the apple, the more likely it is to keep its shape. The sharper the apple, the more likely it is to collapse. Stuffed pork belly with apples Belly pork, with or without its wide, flat bones, is a regular in my kitchen. It is one of the cheaper cuts and roasts more successfully than the bargain cuts from other animals tend to. As I was buying a piece the other day, my butcher, Mr. Godfrey, suggested I stuff it with apples and sausage meat. I did, and the result was sumptuous. enough for 6 pork belly -- 3 1/4 pounds (1.5kg), boned and scored plump, herby fresh sausages -- 5 a large, sharp apple small sage leaves -- 6 a little oil or pork dripping a large glass of hard cider Preheat the oven to 425°F (220°C). Lay the pork belly flat on a work surface. Remove the sausages from their skins and put the sausage meat into a bowl. I am tempted to suggest a little more salt and black pepper, but you alone will know the seasoning of your butcher's best. Peel, core, and coarsely chop the apple, then stir it into the sausage meat with the whole sage leaves (the leaves are cooked whole so they add a subtle note and you can remove them as you carve). Put the sausage meat down the center of the pork, then roll the meat up to form a thick cylinder. Tie with kitchen string down its length to secure the stuYng. Unless you are very professional at tying meat up, it will bulge out here and there, but no matter. Lightly oil the base of a roasting pan, lay the rolled pork in the pan, and season the skin thoroughly with salt and pepper. Roast in the preheated oven for twenty minutes, then lower the heat to 400°F (200°C) and continue cooking for forty to fifty minutes, until the juices run clear. Remove the meat from the pan and keep warm. Pour off much of the fat from the roasting pan (there will be quite a lot) and put it over medium heat. Pour in the cider and bring to a boil, scraping at the pan-stickings and stirring them to dissolve them into the cider. Check the seasoning. Carve the pork and serve with the hot pan juices. Cheese and apple puffs There are some who might call these pithiviers aux pommes et au fromage . Well, they are cheese and apple puffs to me. Store-bought pastry is fine here, though a homemade version could be even better. One per person is enough for a light lunch. But I think they need a salad to offset their richness; something with the bitterness of endive or watercress would be perfect. You could use pretty much any cheese here, but the blues from Strathdon or Lanark would be more than worth a try. I used Bramleys for this because that is what I had around, but I see no reason why a sweeter apple couldn't be good, too. enough for 4 puff pastry -- 1 pound (500g) apples -- 14 ounces (400g) the juice of half a lemon blue cheese, such as Gorgonzola -- 6 ounces (175g) an egg Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C). Roll the pastry out thinly. Using a bowl or small plate as a template, cut out eight disks and put four of them on a baking sheet. Put the others aside. Peel and core the apples, then slice them thinly, dropping them into the lemon juice as you go. Cut the cheese into small cubes and toss it with the apple slices. Season with salt and pepper, then divide the mixture between the four pastry disks. Lightly beat the egg and brush the edges of the pastry. Roll the remaining circles of pastry out just a little more, then lay them over the apples and press tightly to seal the edges together. Brush with beaten egg and bake for fifteen to twenty minutes or until the pastry is deep gold. Leave them to settle for a few minutes before eating. A deep cake of apples with cinnamon and nutmeg We could fall out debating whether this is a cake or a pie. Whatever we decide to call it, the result is extraordinarily deep. The recipe needs a little care: the pastry is extremely fragile and you will feel as if you are peeling apples for England. But the finished cake is truly splendid. Just the thing to make on a wet autumn day. enough for 8 at least for the pastry butter -- 1 cup minus 2 tablespoons (200g) golden baker's sugar -- 1 cup (200g) a large egg all-purpose flour -- 3 cups plus 2 tablespoons (400g) baking powder -- a heaping teaspoon a little milk and sugar, to finish for the filling sweet dessert apples -- 4 pounds (1.8kg) a lemon golden baker's sugar -- 2 tablespoons a knifepoint of ground cinnamon a little grated nutmeg cold heavy cream, to serve To make the pastry, cut the butter into chunks and put it in a stand mixer with a paddle attachment. Add the sugar and beat until pale and creamy. Break the egg into a cup, mix it gently, then add to the butter and sugar, mixing thoroughly. Mix together the flour and baking powder, then add carefully and slowly to the butter mixture. Stop as soon as the flour is incorporated. Remove the dough, put it on a lightly floured board, and roll into a fat sausage. Wrap in wax paper or plastic wrap and chill for half an hour. Meanwhile, peel the apples. As you finish each one, drop it into a bowl of cold water in which you have squeezed the juice of half the lemon. Quarter the apples, then core and thickly slice them, dropping them back into the acidulated water as you go. Drain the apples and put them into a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan with the sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and the juice of the remaining lemon half. Bring to a boil, then turn down to a simmer and continue until the apples are tender but still hold their shape--about ten to fifteen minutes over medium heat with the occasional stir. Leave them to cool. Very lightly butter an 8-inch (20cm) springform cake pan. Remove the pastry from the fridge, cut off a little less than a third of it and return that to the fridge. Cut thick slices from the large piece of pastry and use them to line the base and sides of the cake pan, pressing it firmly into the corners and patching any tears or cracks. The pastry should be quite thick. Chill for twenty minutes. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C). Line the cake pan with a sheet of wax paper or parchment paper and half-fill with pie weights. This will keep the pastry in place. Put a baking sheet in the oven and, when it is hot, put the lined cake pan on it (the heat will help the pastry cook underneath). Bake for fifteen minutes, remove, and leave to cool slightly, then remove the paper and pie weights. Take care not to tear the pastry. Return the pan to the oven for five minutes without the weights and paper. Remove and leave to cool down a little. Turn the oven down to 350°F (180°C). Fill the pastry shell right up to the rim with the apples, holding back as much of the liquid as possible. Roll out the remaining pastry to fit the cake and place it over the top. Patch any holes and gently press the raw pastry onto the edges of the cooked. Cut three slits in the top of the pastry to let out the steam (though they will close on cooking). Brush the top with a little milk. Bake on the hot baking sheet for forty-five minutes, until the top is nut brown. Remove from the oven, dust with a little superfine sugar and leave to settle down for a good fifteen minutes. Run a thin spatula around the edge to free the pastry from the pan, but leave the cake in place for now. When the cake is thoroughly cool, carefully remove it from the pan. You will need a sharp knife and a jug of cream. Excerpted from Ripe: A Cook in the Orchard by Nigel Slater All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
