The Irish Times - Saturday, September 25, 2010

Old friends are best

Sometimes an old favourite cookery book can be more useful than a flashy new one, writes DOMINI KEMP

AS A COMPULSIVE cookbook buyer, I find myself more often than not disappointed with the books that I hastily purchase and find myself going back to the ones that have been all but forgotten. Here’s a classic example: The long-awaited Momofuku book from New Yorker David Chang, the Korean American star chef, is exciting in terms of the fusion or “bad pseudo-fusion cuisine” (his description, not mine) that is produced in his restaurants. The pictures are great, there’s a feeling of rawness about the whole thing, and there are some fantastic ideas for professional chefs, as well as some cool sauces, dips and side dishes for enthusiastic home cooks.

But for most of the recipes, you need a lot of commitment: Fuji apple salad, kimchi, smoked jowl and maple labne anyone? (Labne is a Middle Eastern yoghurt or soft cheese, but until I read the above words, I had never heard of it either.) His ideas for poaching eggs in their shell is so nifty that I’m going to have try it to see how we can use it in our restaurants. But for the most part, the only thing I may be testing for home-cooking is his treatment of Brussels sprouts, which may help fill a gap in my Christmas repertoire.

It was because of this slightly distracted feeling that I grabbed an old copy of Nigella Lawson’s first book, How to Eat. The book contains hardly any pictures and the ones that do appear would hardly qualify as “food porn”. You would also hardly recognise the author from the mugshot at the back: a sultry Tanita Tikaram springs to mind.

But what hit me was the fact that we fell in love with Nigella for a jolly good reason – she is a great writer. If you don’t own a copy of this book, then go out and buy one immediately. I’d totally forgotten how great it is: packed full of good recipes and utterly devoid of silly pictures of wooden spoons being caressed.

Anyway, I intended making her beef stew with anchovies and thyme, but ended up digressing entirely to suit myself, eliminating the flour and beef stock from the recipe. The result was a really unctuous stew that I can’t wait to make again. Served with some boiled spuds, or even better, some gnocchi and a big last-minute squeeze of frozen peas into the stew, this made a complete and delicious dinner.

Don’t tell anyone that it contains a tin of anchovies – they’ll never know and the smackiness of the umami-inducing anchovies gave this stew some savoury edge.

Beef stew with red wine and thyme

You need a big ovenproof saucepan, with a lid on it, for this recipe

Olive oil

1.5kg beef, suitable for stewing

Salt and pepper

1 large onion, peeled and sliced

3 carrots, peeled and chopped into chunks

½ head celery, finely sliced

4 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced

Bunch of fresh thyme

1 small tin of anchovies (about 30g)

1 bottle of red wine

Squeeze of harissa paste

Good pinch of Chinese five spice

½ x 200g pack gnocchi (optional)

100g-200g frozen peas (optional)

Preheat an oven to 150 degrees/gas mark two. I was under severe time constraints when I made this, so I started by frying the beef in batches in a large frying pan in a little of the olive oil and I seasoned it really well. In the big saucepan (that I was going to cook the stew in) I added a bit of olive oil and on a decent heat, started frying the onions, then the carrots and celery along with the garlic and thyme. When the beef was brown enough, I transferred it into the saucepan, and heated up the frying pan again with some more oil and browned the rest of the beef.

If you need to de-glaze the frying pan, then a good splash of water or some of the wine will do. But make sure you pour the juices into the saucepan. Add the anchovies and wine to the vegetables. Mix well, then add the harissa and the five spice. Mix again, and cook in the oven for at least two hours, preferably three. Keep the lid on and taste after an hour or so. If you feel it needs some more liquid, add some hot water. However, if it seems like there’s too much liquid, leave the lid off for 20 minutes to reduce it. The anchovies are quite salty, so you’ll find that it has plenty of flavour.

Right before you want to serve the stew, you can add some gnocchi directly to the pot. If it’s too dry for them to cook properly, cook them in a saucepan for a couple of minutes, drain and add to the stew. Add a couple of handfuls of peas and cook until they are hot through. Allow the stew to relax for a few minutes before serving.

Chocolate-chip cookies

For 10 million cookie points, make this batch of choc-chip cookies. The soft brown sugar seems to give them a richness that’s slightly more unusual than plain old caster sugar.

Based on Adam Byatt’s recipe in ‘How to Eat In’.

150g dark chocolate

150g milk chocolate

170g butter

200g soft dark brown sugar

100g caster sugar

1 egg

1 egg yolk

250g plain flour

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

Pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 190 degrees/gas mark five. Get two baking trays and cover them with parchment paper. Break or roughly chop the chocolate and set it aside. Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the brown sugar and caster sugar. Mix well, take off the heat and add the egg and the extra yolk. Fold the butter and sugar mix into the dried ingredients. Mix and fold really well so there are no flour pockets. Add the chunks of chocolate.

Turn the cookie dough out on to a lightly floured surface. Divide the mixture up, shape and roll into about 30 balls. Place cookies about two-centimetres apart on the baking tray and bake for about seven minutes.

Cool slightly, then place on a wire rack and keep going with the rest of the cookies. Alternatively roll into a cigar shape using cling film, and freeze until needed. Cook from frozen, but reduce heat by 10 degrees so they don’t burn around the edges. They may take a couple of minutes longer. They are delicious eaten while still warm. dkemp@irishtimes.com