Paper Palate

Greetings from the UK and best wishes for the festive season to you all! My name’s Christina Nevin and I’ll be covering what’s hot, cold and lukewarm in the magazine food press from this part of the world for “The Paper Palate”. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to email me.

“Olive” December 2005 issue

Christmas is naturally the topic of the moment and what better present than a cookbook? December’s Olive came up with the entertaining notion of asking fourteen top chefs for their Number 1 book. Several of these are out-of-print but definitely sound appetising. If you can track them down, the cook in your life is sure to appreciate the extra effort. My ‘must buy’ is The Silver Spoon, the decades-old bible for domestic Italian cooking which has only recently been released in English translation. Following that feature is another high spot for culinary bibliophiles, a list of Top 20 Best New Releases of cooking and foodways books, with a brief blurb on each.

The parade of gorgeous speciality comestibles is one of the reasons I love Christmastime food magazines. Olive certainly doesn’t fail to deliver, with a glossy four-page spread of 50 gourmet treats. My favourites: the beautiful little jewel-hued jars of flower confit jellies by Mortimer and Bennett (£2.95/125gm) and Caviar House’s cute little Matreshka vodka dolls, available in the very seasonal Klukvennaya (cranberry) as well as Medovaya (honey) or Lux (original) (£20/35cl or £226/50cl). If I leave my magazine lying open with the items circled, I wonder if my friends will catch a clue? Hmmm. Worth a try!

Gordon Ramsay and his head chefs ham it up for the camera in “Party of Six’” a ‘Boys Night Out’ pre-Christmas dinner article with recipes – nothing startling, just roast beef and tasty vegetables. Merilee Parker (of BBC2’s Saturday Kitchen fame) also offers a pre-Christmas menu, consisting of Asian style gravadlax, Pomegranate & mixed peppercorn venison, Herb salad with chilli & olives, and Pineapple carpaccio with chilli and ginger syrup. Whilst any of these dishes would be delightful by themselves, I thought the constantly repeated use of ginger, molasses and chilli made this a very unbalanced menu overall.

December also being the Month of the Canapé, Olive has a good selection of munchies recipes, which range from quick assembly (Prawn cocktail crisps) to overly fussy (Prosciutto & cranberry stuffing balls), and from the simple but classic tasting (Mini jacket potatoes with sour cream & caviar) to the inspirational (Parmesan parsnip twiglets).

Traditional Christmas fare with minor variations is the mainstay of this month’s recipes. There’s a sixteen recipe selection that has front-page billing as “256 modern menu ideas for Christmas” – achieved as that’s the number of combinations possible from the sixteen recipes. Rather a cheap ploy, to my mind! That said, the recipes - which are by the likes of Paul Merrett (Goat’s cheese with ham & white truffle honey), Shane Osborn of Pied ? Terre (Gratin with pine nuts), and Heston Blumenthal of The Fat Duck (Mince pie ice cream) - all look pretty good. John Torode of Masterchef Goes Large and Smiths of Smithfield offers a “Can’t Fail Countdown” with his Christmas main (classic roast turkey and vegetables). If any readers follow this, I’d be interested to hear about the veracity of that claim.

Champagne is enshrined in my heart as the festive tipple and Max Allen (writer of Sniff, Swirl and Slurp) gives a quick rundown on some good choices, as well as good advice on “How to open a bottle of bubbly without killing yourself. . . or a loved one”. I need to show that to a couple of people I know! There’s also a rundown on whites, reds and box schemes.

Christmas dinner just doesn’t feel complete without fruit pudding, and Olive has an article on Wilkin & Sons, creators of Tiptree traditionally steamed Christmas puds. These are chock full of alcohol-soaked vine fruits, spices and the company’s own Royal Warrant-holding marmalade. I’ve been a devotee for years and it’s nice to see the company is now also producing an organic option.

Olive runs a regular restaurant feature, and this month stars Glenelg Inn, a gastro-pub a couple of hours outside Inverness that overlooks the Isle of Skye (translation for non-UK folk: very much in the Middle of Nowhere). Main attractions are its remoteness, gorgeous surroundings, rare whiskies, log fire, fish crate seats and simple but excellent menu – including a wide range of incredibly fresh fish and seafood. However judging from their Prune & Whiskey Tart recipe, the rest of the food shouldn’t be missed either.

Still in a Highland theme, Chris Barber (freelance journalist, consultant and lecturer at Leith’s School of Food and Wine) writes how he trained a group of actors to convince as kitchen staff, for the BBC’s new adaptation of Macbeth, set in a Michelin-starred restaurant. Sabatier-wielding Scots? I have to track down a copy of that production!

The City Food Map for this month is New York. Recommended eateries are: Freemans, Doyers Vietnamese Restaurant, La Esquina, Caracas Arepa Bar, Cafecito, Press Toast, Metropol, Market Café, Spigolo and DuMont. Comments anyone?

Rounding off December’ s Olive are a nice little list of London’s foodie stores (handily given suburb by suburb), the rundown on three Caribbean food paradises, quality Christmas food delivery companies, and food writer Terry Durack’s “Blue Cheese Top 10″. My favourite tip? Melted Stilton over hot beetroot. Mmm, sounds like heaven.

From Olive’s canapé selection, here’s a sample recipe and my test cooking results:

Beef Wellington ‘sausage rolls’ with mustard
45 minutes
beef or venison fillet 750g, a long skinny bit
rosemary 2 tsp, chopped (save some whole needle for decoration)
Dijon mustard
ready-rolled shortcrust pastry 375g pack
egg 1, lightly beaten, to glaze

Heat the oven to 220°C/fan 200°C/gas 7. Cut the fillet in half lengthwise, season and rub with rosemary. Smear all over with a thin layer of mustard. Unroll the pastry, roll again into a long rectangle the thickness of a £1 coin (Authors note: 3mm) then cut in half lengthways. Roll up each fillet in pastry, tucking under the ends, to make two snug, neat and completely sealed parcels. Lay on a buttered baking sheet, brush all over with the beaten egg and bake for 15 – 20 minutes or until the pastry is golden. Rest for 5 minutes then, using a well-sharpened knife, slice across into sausage rolls. Top each with a rosemary needle. Make 16.

As sausage rolls go, this was a complete flop. Juices from the meat caused the pastry to go soggy and break apart when removed from the baking tray. One long roll stayed together more than the other, but only half could be successfully cut into usable ‘sausage rolls’. I used venison fillet and my only change was using wholegrain mustard in the absence of Dijon mustard - otherwise I followed the recipe faithfully. My ineptness at baking is probably part of the issue however, possibly a more experienced baker wouldn’t have the same problem.

If I make it again I’d cut the fillet into smaller pieces and make little individual Beef Wellington pastries. And I would be tempted to make it again as this was delicious; the results were cheerfully consumed by my housemates Mark and Tanya for Sunday dinner, and declared very nice indeed, the layer of mustard drawing especial favourable comment. Although it’s expensive and sometimes hard to find, I’d stick to venison rather than changing to beef fillet for this recipe. The distinctive rich meat really raises this dish above the crowd.

Cost: The venison fillet cost £5.30, the organic egg 24p, and the shortcrust pastry £1.28. I already had mustard, and raided my neighbour’s rosemary bush, so the total cost came to £6.82. Good value, to my mind.