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Smoked salmon ‘n spuds

As my mission to clear out the deep freeze continues, I laid my hand upon a lovely package of alder-smoked sockeye salmon; first I made a moderately successful smoked salmon quiche, and then tried a good smoked salmon gratin. Sort of a cross between scalloped potatoes and fish pie and very good with a simple salad or steamed vegetable side dish.

Smoked Salmon & Potato Gratin
2lb/1kg starchy potatoes (e.g. russets, Yukon Gold or King Edward)
8oz/250g smoked salmon, flaked or diced
1 tbsp drained capers
1 cup light cream
1 tbsp cornstarch
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tsp dijon or wholegrain mustard
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 tsp grated nutmeg
2 tbsp butter

  • Preheat the oven to 350f.
  • Peel the potatoes and slice very thinly, dry with a cloth and use one third of them to cover a well buttered baking dish. Season.
  • Scatter half the salmon and capers on top. Repeat.
  • Cover with the rest of the potatoes and season again.
  • Mix the cream with the cornstarch, garlic and mustard and pour over the potatoes.
  • Grate nutmeg over the top and dot with butter.
  • Cover and bake for 1 hour; then bake uncovered another ½ hour or so, until the potatoes are tender, golden brown and bubbling. Let it rest for 10-15 minutes before serving

Fish, to taste right, must swim 3 times: in water, in butter and in wine.
— Polish Proverb

Food in poetry

Here’s a funny thing, from a year ago. As a National Poetry Day project last year, the Poetry Book Society had set up a food page allowing you to search poems by ingredient (or browse by author or title). How wonderful is that??

Here’s another funny thing. My mother loooooved parsley. She had trees of the stuff all over the balcony and it adorned, nay, festooned all our meals. I wonder if she ever saw this tribute ditty?

Parsley, parsley everywhere
Let me have my victuals bare.
–Ogden Nash

Chocolate+Chestnut Boulestin, and Nigel’s Cheese+Onion Tart

I’ve been talking at very long distance with Clodagh about various food matters, and she sent me a recipe she’d seen in the Guardian not so long ago, for Chestnut Chocolate Boulestin, with the advice that you warm the dish before attempting to coat it with caramel as otherwise it will solidify where poured. I am not sure we can even get tinned chestnuts in this corner of the world, but it might be worth looking. It sounds like a worthwhile venture: a truly serious chocolate pudding for grown-ups. If anyone else tries it or works out good variations, let us know.

We also embarked on a discussion about an amazing looking recipe from Nigel Slater’s sacred text Appetite: a Cheese and Onion Tart, made with puff pastry.

Torriano Time

A long-running small independent poetry series in London, Torriano Poets, is running its second ever poetry competition (proceeds to the Torriano Meeting House Support Fund). Here are the details:

First Prize £250 Second Prize £150 Third £75. The winning poets, first, second and third, will be offered feature readings at the adjudication celebrations on Sunday, 4th February 2007 at Torriano Meeting House, 99 Torriano Avenue, Kentish Town, London NW5 2RX United Kingdom.

NO ENTRY FORM REQUIRED
= Poems up to a maximum of 40 lines each to be typed on a single side of A4 paper
= A separate sheet of A4 should contain the titles of poems, name, land and e-mail addresses and phone number of entrant
= Entry fees: £3 One poem, £5 for Two, £10 for Five. Cheques payable to Torriano Support Fund

ADJUDICATORS
Anna Adams, Leah Fritz & Peter Phillips (poems will be read by all three adjudicators)

ENTRIES TO
Diana Baggs, 1 Havelock Road,Walmer, Deal, Kent CT14 7TE United Kingdom

ENQUIRIES
Tel: +44-(0)1304 372914 or email: june.english@btinternet.com

CLOSING DATE
12th November 2006. Winners will be notified by 7th Jan 2007. The winning poems will also be featured in Brittle Star magazine.

Plum Wonderful

Ooh, even better than Lightning Cake – but not as good a name – is Dutch Plum Cake which I found in my mother’s 1955 edition of Good Housekeeping, a book in even worse physical condition than the Boston cookbook. This one has silver duct tape on the spine and crumbling pages. Luckily someone else has copied out the recipe for me. I didn’t make the vanilla sauce; it was lovely warm and on its own, or with ice cream. And a good way for me to use up a little of my personal warehouse of home made jams and jellies!

I’ve been enjoying a blast of end-of-summer reading. A wonderfully easy and useful book on my table just now is 101 Ways to Make Poems Sell, by Chris Hamilton-Emery, a poet himself as well as the publishing director of an excellent UK press, Salt Publishing. In a neat demonstration of zeitgeist, it’s appeared at the same time as Wendy Morton’s memoir about the poet as self-promoter, Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast. Hamilton-Emery’s book gives some incredibly useful background on the poetry publishing industry (if that is the word for this labour of love) and a host of well-organized and practical suggestions for poets and publishers alike to get this slowest of all selling genres out into the world.

Back to school

There’s the inescapable edge of gold on the maple leaves, the geese are gathering on the Gorge and the wasps are getting cranky and slow. The blackberries are getting tasteless and starting to wither, the autumn apples are beginning to drop. Those of us blessed with the permanent-student gene are feeling itchy for new stationery, the crack of textbook spines, the scent of printers ink.

And so, narrowing my view to avoid inconvenient questions like how I’ll afford it, or how I’ll make 10,000 arrangements in 60 days, I’ve accepted a place in a year-long master’s program at the Slow Food’s University of Gastronomic Sciences in Colorno, near Parma in northern Italy.

No, it’s not a cooking course, or even a study of stomach ailments – at least not deliberately – just a year of learning about food. The courses include:

Food History and Elements of Food Culture
Wine History and Wine Culture
Food Anthropology
Sociology and Psychology of Food Consumption
Journalism and Web Page
Techniques of Food Photography
Sensory Analysis
Culinary Techniques

Field trips are required, throughout Italy and in France, Spain and southern Germany, in order to study pasta, cheese, cured meat products, oil and wine. Luckily it’s taught in English, as my Italian was bad even before it was rusty, though there are language classes and of course a lot of opportunity to practice. So now I have a couple of months to get ready for the next adventure.