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Coleslaw

“I don’t like coleslaw.”

Mr Weasel really should know better by now. It’s been nearly ten years; surely that’s enough time to realise that saying such a thing could only have one possible result?

I made some coleslaw.

You’ll need:

¼ celeleriac, peeled
5 carrots, peeled
¼ white cabbage
2 tablespoons double cream
2 tablespoons mayonnaise (make it yourself or use Hellman’s – I’ve still not found another I’ll allow fridge space)
Juice of 1 lemon
1 teaspoon toasted caraway seeds
2 teaspoons walnut oil
½ teaspoon sugar
Salt and pepper

Julienne (cut into fine strips) all the vegetables. This will be infinitely easier if you own a mandoline or a food processor with the relevant blade. The rest of the recipe is simplicity itself – just mix the lot together in a big bowl. Taste to see if you need more lemon, salt or sugar. Then serve immediately.

The idea with coleslaw is that it should be creamy and fresh. It’s really not good if you leave it hanging around (like supermarket or fast food coleslaw); it needs its crunch. This means that it doesn’t make for good leftovers. This will make enough for two people. Swap the mayonnaise for Greek yoghurt if you want a slightly lighter texture.

Mr Weasel’s verdict? He finished his bowl in under a minute, wiped his mouth and said:

“Is there any more?”

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Sweet roast winter vegetables

Outside it’s dismal. The garden is kitted out in a million shades of brown and dark grey. So how is it that vegetables at this time of year are so brightly coloured? Right now, I can buy fresh, dark red beetroot, bright orange butternut squash, and darkest green winter herbs like rosemary and sage. The vegetables in season at this time of year have an added benefit – they’re full of the sugars they’ve been saving up all year, so they are sweet and delicious.

Beetroot is a much maligned vegetable. Unsurprising, really; I can’t think of many things which benefit from being drowned in malt vinegar. We used to be served it at school, and God, it was revolting. The holiday in France when I was 9, where I was served a plate of crudites including some raw, grated beetroot, was a revelation. Beetroot in its natural state is sweet, juicy and earthy. If you’re only used to the pickled stuff and you see a bunch on sale raw, take it home and experiment with it. You may give yourself a delicious surprise.

Whole bulbs of fennel are on sale at the moment as well. Sweet and fragrant, fennel cooks to a delectable crunch, and here, where it’s roasted in white wine and goose fat, it’s just beautiful. I’ve used sweet onions (Vidalia) – these onions are not as easy to come across in the UK as they are in America, but Sainsbury’s are carrying them at the moment with a recommendation that you use them in salads. They’re so full of sugar that they roast to a caramel perfection. I’m roasting a couple more onions in this than we’re likely to eat tonight – they’re excellent cold too.

To serve three hungry people or four preoccupied ones, you’ll need:

1 butternut squash, quartered lengthways
1 bulb fennel
6 sweet onions
4 raw beetroots
1 bulb garlic
1 handful thyme
1 handful sage
1 handful rosemary stalks
5 anchovies
¼ bottle white wine (I used a Chardonnay)
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
3 tablespoons goose fat
2 tablespoons maple syrup
Salt and pepper

Wash the beetroot and cut the tops and bottoms off. Cut ends like this will allow the edges to catch and caramelise. Cut the squash into four lengthwise, and slice the fennel roughly (into about five pieces). Divide the garlic into cloves – don’t peel them.

Peel four of the onions and trim the roots and tips off, then push a knife through them so they are nearly quartered, but still held together at the bottom. Stuff each nearly-quartered onion with thyme, making sure there’s a good amount of salt sprinkled over the cut surfaces. Chop the rest roughly.

Put all of the vegetables into a baking tray with the anchovies on the bottom. The anchovies will not make the dish taste fishy, but they’ll give everything a rich, dark background flavour. Pour over the wine and drizzle with whole coriander seeds, maple syrup and goose fat. Strew the rosemary and the thyme over the top and put in the oven at 180°C for an hour and a half, or until the edges of all the vegetables are golden brown.

The wine and juices will have made an alarmingly pink sauce. Serve the vegetables with some crusty bread to mop up the liquid, and drink the rest of that bottle of wine.

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Pan Bagna

I’ve just bought a new mandoline, having noticed that I was avoiding cooking as much gratin as I would like in order to avoid the slicing. Unfortunately, you’ve already read my very best gratin recipe, so I put my mind to other dishes which might involve a lot of delicate slicing of hard vegetables.

Pan Bagna is Provençale for Big, Wet Sandwich (actually bathed bread, but Big Wet Sandwich is more descriptive). It’s big, it’s wet, and it’s full of delicate slices of sunshine; olives, garlic, peppers, artichoke hearts and all the best bits of Provence.

You’ve spent years trying to stop the tomatoes in your sandwich making the bread wet. This is a recipe where you want them to make the bread wet. You want the bread drenched in olive oil, tomato, the golden liquid running off freshly roast peppers, the scent of garlic and savoury juices.

You can make this without a mandoline, but the slicing will take you longer. Make your pan bagna the night before you plan to eat it so that the flavours can mingle and the bread soften. To feed three people (or two obnoxiously overweight ones) you’ll need:

1 large loaf of good, rustic bread
½ a cucumber
8 tomatoes
12 radishes
6 artichoke hearts in olive oil
8 anchovy fillets in olive oil
2 shallots or 1 small red onion
2 red or yellow peppers
8 black olives
2 teaspoons of capers
2 cloves of garlic
Pepper
Olive oil

Quarter the peppers, put them in a dry frying pan until charred, and slice into strips. Slice
the loaf (I used a baguette-shaped one – round loaves work well too) in half along its equator. Pour olive oil all over each of the cut sides of the bread, and rub it in with the back of a spoon. Spread a crushed clove of garlic on each of the cut sides – the oil will help it spread evenly.

The oil-pouring stage was the stage at which Raffles the cat decided to do some kitchen-based leaping. He ended up with an Ayurvedic-style stream of olive oil running onto the top of his head, and now looks like an advertisement for cat Brylcreem. It appears to be hard to lick the top of your own head, so we are hoping his sister notices and helps him out.

Lay the oily, garlicky bottom slice on a piece of clingfilm large enough to wrap around a very big sandwich. Slice all the vegetables thinly, and build up layers on the bottom slice of bread. (There’s no set order to do things in here, so you can use your imagination.) This may require some engineering skill; this is a lot to fit into one baguette, and you may find it helpful to chock the slice of loaf with teaspoons to keep it level. Make sure the anchovies (chop them), olives and capers end up in layers towards the middle so their flavour can permeate the whole sandwich.

Anchovy-haters are allowed to substitute tuna.

When your sandwich is full of all the ingredients, put the lid on and wrap tightly in cling film. This is a two-person job. When you’ve got a cling-film cocoon, wrap that in tin foil. Then put the whole thing in the fridge, with weights on the top.

MFK Fisher advocated sitting on your sandwich over an afternoon or so. Feel free to do this if you do not care particularly for your soft furnishings. Otherwise, leave the sandwich, weighted, in the fridge overnight, unwrap carefully, slice and serve. Have a good munch in the snow and pretend you’re in Nice.