Tender: A Cook and His Vegetable Patch - Hardcover

Slater, Nigel

 
9781607740377: Tender: A Cook and His Vegetable Patch
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1607740370 ISBN 13: 9781607740377
Verlag: Ten Speed Press, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

A comprehensive, deeply personal, and visually stunning guide to growing and cooking vegetables from Britain’s foremost food writer, with more than 400 recipes and extensive gardening notes.

In the tradition of Roast Chicken and Other Stories comes Tender, a passionate guide to savoring the best the garden has to offer. An instant classic when it was first published in the UK, Tender is a cookbook, a primer on produce, and above all, a beloved author’s homage to his favorite vegetables. Slater’s inspired and inspiring writing makes this a book to sit with and savor as much as one to prop open in the kitchen. The chapters explore 29 vegetables and offer enticing, comforting recipes such as Potato Cakes with Chard and Taleggio, a Tart of asparagus and Tarragon, and Grilled Lamb with Eggplant and Za’atar. With wit, enthusiasm, and a charming lack of pretension, Slater champions vegetables—through hands-on nurturing in the garden and straightforward preparations in the kitchen—with this truly essential book for every kitchen library.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Nigel Slater is the author of a collecion of bestselling books including the classics Real Fast Food, Appetite, and the critically acclaimed The Kitchen Diaries. He has written a much-loved column for The Observer for seventeen years. His memoir, Toast —The Story of a Boy’s Hunger, has won six major awards, including British Biography of the Year. Visit www.nigelslater.com.

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There is a moment in late April, somewhere between the end of the plum blossom and the height of the apple, just as the Holly Blue butterflies start to appear in the garden, that the early asparagus turns up at the farmers’ market. Tied in bunches of just six or ten, these first green and mauve spears of Asparagus officinalis are sometimes presented in a burlap-lined wicker basket, as if to endorse their fragility and their expense. Their points tightly closed, a faint, gray bloom of youth still apparent on their stems, it would take a will stronger than mine not to buy.
 
The older I get, the more interested I become in the shoots that the Persians called asparag, and in Pershore, the heart of the old British asparagus trade, they still call “sparrow-grass.” The farms around Kent and Suffolk sell it from open sheds an egg’s throw from the field in which it has been grown, and where I have been known to bring it back by the armful when it’s cheap enough. You see the occasional row on an allotment, but the plants take up the most space of any vegetable and require vigilant picking and careful transport home. “Grass,” as it is so often known by greengrocers and farmers alike, remains expensive for a reason.
 
Life is full of small rituals, and never more so than in my kitchen. The first asparagus of the year is boiled within minutes of my walking through the door with it, butter is carefully melted so that it is soft and formless but not yet liquid, then I eat it with the sort of reverence I usually reserve for mulberries or a piece of exquisite sashimi. It is almost impossible not to respect those first spears of the year.
 
The short, six-week season starts in late April, and once it is up and running, the price drops and the bundles get fatter. I could have it every day—in a salad with cold salmon, stirred into a frugal rice pilaf, chopped and stirred into the custard filling of a tart, or grilled and served with lemon juice and grated pecorino. I might get tired of its side effects—it contains methyl mercaptan, which makes most people’s pee stink—but its flavor is the strongest sign yet that summer has started.
 
By mid-June all but a few stragglers have gone, and the farmers rest their ancient plants till next spring.
 
 
 
Asparagus in the garden
 
There are days when I covet my neighbors’ untended, overgrown garden. It’s a haven for the foxes whose earth stretches far under the “lawn,” on which they lie sprawled in the sun, six at a time. The land would make a much-needed overflow for my own vegetable patch.
 
In celebration of the luxury of more space, my first planting would be asparagus, one of the few vegetables I have yet to grow for myself. The crowns, as the root-balls are known, take up a considerable amount of room, far more than I can afford to offer them in my own tiny garden. You can raise plants from seed, if you are capable of waiting three years for them to gather strength before your first pick. Most people buy two- or even three-year-old crowns instead. They are usually delivered in late spring, wrapped in newspaper, a mass of dangling, spiderlike roots sporting a short stalk or two. You dig them in—they thrive on sandy soil and sunshine—planting them in deep, manure-lined trenches under a generous 4 inches (10cm) of soil, and then you must pamper them with seaweed and more manure and ply them generously with drink.
 
As a thank you, they will send up occasional spears from late April to midsummer. Picking stimulates growth, but it is unwise to pick for too long. The farmers around my childhood home in Worcestershire would never harvest for more than six weeks for fear of exhausting the plants. Leaving a few late arrivals to develop into feathery fronds—the sort a bridegroom attaches to a buttonhole carnation—will help to restore the crown. Resting fields in growing areas can be spotted in late summer by tall fronds dotted with carmine berries, waving in the breeze.
 
Asparagus needs to be cut, never pulled, and you should slice as near to the crown as possible. The temptation to pick every last spear should be avoided. I have seen growers lowering their bundles into buckets of water after cutting to keep the ends moist. Dried up, they will find few takers.
 
 
 
Asparagus in the kitchen
 
There are two types of asparagus of interest, three if you count the fat “jumbo” spears, whose flavor is rarely as impressive as their size: the thin “sprue,” finer than a pencil, and the thicker spears for picking up with our fingers. Sprue is my favorite size for working into a salad with samphire, melted butter, and grated lemon. Being supple, it tangles elegantly round your fork.
 
The thicker spears are most tender at their flowering point, less so at the thick end where the stalk has been cut from the plant. You can often eat the entire spear, and a tough end is no real hardship—it acts as something to hold while we suck butter off the tastiest bits. Some people prefer to trim their “grass,” whittling the white end to a point with a paring knife or peeler.
 
Get the spears to the pot as quickly as you can. They lose their moisture and sweetness by the hour. If you have to store them (I often buy three bunches at once at the Sunday farmers’ market), stand them in a bowl of water like a bunch of flowers.
 
We can safely ignore the more far-fetched ways to boil asparagus, which range, in case you have a fancy to try, from standing them upright in a pan with their feet supported by new potatoes to cradling them over the water in a kitchen towel like a baby in swaddling clothes. Well intentioned, but unnecessary. Just lower the bundle of stalks tenderly into a shallow pan of merrily boiling water. If they are too long, let the points rest on the edge of the pan, where they will steam while the thicker ends tenderize in the water. They are good grilled over charcoal too, where the smokiness they take on makes up for the very slight lessening in juiciness. And they can be baked in aluminum foil or parchment paper with butter, a few sprigs of tarragon or chervil, and some moisture in the form of white wine or water so that they effectively steam in the sealed parcel.
 
Once we have tired of boiled asparagus and melted butter, the spears make a deeply herbaceous soup or a mild, rather soporific tart and marry well with pancetta or soft-boiled eggs. A few in a salad will make it feel extravagant, even if the only other ingredients are new potatoes, oil, lemon juice, and parsley. My all-time favorite asparagus lunch is one where a small, parchment-colored soft cheese is allowed to melt lazily over freshly boiled spears. The warm cheese oozing from its bloomy crust makes an impromptu sauce.
 
 
 
Seasoning your asparagus
 
Butter  Melted, for dressing lightly cooked spears.
 
Lemon juice  An underused seasoning for buttered asparagus. Particularly good where Parmesan is involved.
 
Tomato  A fresh tomato sauce, made by roasting small tomatoes, crushing them with a fork, then stirring in olive oil, crushed garlic, and a splash of red wine vinegar.
 
Parmesan  Finely grated over buttered spears or used to form a crust on a gratin of asparagus and cream.
 
Bacon  Toss a pan of bacon or pancetta snippets and its hot fat over freshly cooked spears.
 
Cheese  Soft, grassy cheeses, especially the richer cow’s milk varieties.
 
Eggs  As a filling for a tart, or simply soft boiled,...

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Verlag
Ten Speed Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2011
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1607740370
ISBN 13 
9781607740377
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
618
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Ten Speed Press
https://crownpublishing.com/

Attn: Andrea T Sheridan 1745 BROADWAY
New York
NY
10019
USA
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar